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...people don't call for information anymore, says Bruce Stewart, KGB's CEO of mobile and digital. They text. "When you want to know something, you text your friend or someone who might know. We are looking to be that someone." After launching a successful texting service in the U.K., KGB decided to bring it to the U.S. The beta test launched last fall, and already the company has thousands of "agents" ready to provide you with anything from movie times and train schedules to the type of pen Bob Dole holds in his hand. (Answer: sometimes it's felt...
...KGB acronym isn't accidental. Knowledge Generation Bureau's television commercial - in which an older gentleman interrogates a young recruit about the capital of New Zealand and the song "Sugar Sugar" - never tells you what the company is selling, and it deliberately tries to associate the KGB initials with mystery and conspiracy. "We wanted to rebrand the KGB," says Stewart. "We're democratizing information, giving knowledge out to the broad public instead of taking it. Contrast that to the historical one, and people...
Despite Stewart's claim, the Global Knowledge Network is also taking plenty of knowledge for itself, since the more users text, the more KGB can discover about its customers. For now, there are no plans to sell the information to marketers, but, says Stewart, "We see what are people asking about. What movies are they asking to see, what restaurants are they interested in going to, what sports teams they like, what merchandise they're looking to buy - there is an interesting level of insight about what people are thinking." (See the top 10 iPhone applications...
...Internet age there are very few questions that can't be answered with a simple Google search. And with Web-capable cell phones, there really isn't any need for KGB or the similar service ChaCha (which is free but more annoying because its messages are riddled with ads). So KGB has to distinguish itself by the accuracy and speed of its answers. To find out if the company's service is of any use, we put it to the test, sending different questions at different times throughout the day to 542542 (or "KGBKGB"). Below are the unedited texts...
...tall is Danny DeVito? KGB: Danny DeVito is 5 inches tall. His birth name is Daniel Michael DeVito Jr., born Nov. 17, 1944. Thx! (Response time: 3 minutes) Q: 5 inches? Don't you mean 5 feet? KGB: My apologies. Danny DeVito is 5 feet tall. He was in the movie Romancing the Stone. Thx. (Response time: 3 minutes...