The Knowledge Market

Every cloud and all that – Amy Winehouse’s death might have been a tragedy for the singer’s friends and family and a shock for millions of music fans but for Q&A site ChaCha it was something of a bonanza.

ChaCha saw a veritable frenzy of activity as users made a beeline for the site to check out the rumours and find out more about the minutiae of Winehouse’s bright but sadly curtailed time amongst us.

According to the news realease put out by the site there were five times as many questions about Winehouse as about Justin Bieber, the next most popular entertainment topic.  Though the ChaCha press release doesn’t seem to stop to consider it, that may be down to the fact that Amy Winehouse’s death was something of a shock and constituted news.  The fact that Justin Bieber lives does not.

Now one doesn’t want to carp, but this does prompt the question just how insensitive and  desparate a site has to be to promote itself as the preferred Q&A destination for ambulance chasers.  If I headed up ChaCha I’d be asking some hard questions of the person who thought that was a smart news release to issue.