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http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1874375,00.html
Answers for 50 Cents: Testing the New KGB
By CLAIRE SUDDATH Tuesday, Feb. 03, 2009

The KGB's agents are everywhere. They're with me when I go for a walk, they follow me home after work, and if I wake up in the middle of the night, they're just a phone call away.

I'm talking about the Knowledge Generation Bureau, of course. The Knowledge Generation Bureau is a text message-based information service, that, for 50 cents a text, will answer any question you have as accurately as possible. The New York-based company has been a major player in the directory assistance market for years; whenever you dial 4-1-1, chances are good that KGB will answer.

But 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 United Kingdom, 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-tip, sometimes ballpoint, and occasionally it's a pencil.)

Agents work from home on their own schedules and make 10 cents a text (5 cents if they simply forward a computer-generated response, like driving directions or phone numbers). Applicants must pass a "Special Agents Challenge" that is a trivia game mixed with a standardized math test for middle schoolers. Since applicants can cheat by using the Internet, failing is a challenge.

The 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 say, 'Oh, I get it.'"

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 now 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 looking to buy — there is an interesting level of insight about what people are thinking."

In the 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, and KGB's responses. >> Read further --