I’m sitting in the airport, watching the interview with the new vice presidential hopeful and simultaneously sending a text message from my cell phone to 242242: “Can one see Russia from Alaska?” On the phone keypad, 242242 stands for ChaCha, the fastest growing mobile search service in the U.S.

Since the company refocused its business model back in January, ChaCha has experienced 800% growth, responded to 27 million queries, caught up with Yahoo! and is about to hit the 7% mark of the total mobile search market. CEO Scott A. Jones tells SearchEngineWatch.com (SEW) that every 10 seconds ChaCha has a new user asking a question, and they are surpassing Google SMS as the fastest growing mobile app. The service conveniently accommodates cell phone users who haven’t acquired smartphones with an Internet connection by giving them access to something as good as a 411 service, but less costly, and as good as a search engine with one definitive answer.

On August 1 ChaCha announced the launch of ChaCha 1:1, a mobile service designed for corporate mobile marketing campaigns and had already signed up Coca-Cola as a client.

Back at the airport, five minutes later I get a response from ChaCha on my cell phone:

“At their closest, Russia and Alaska are a little less than two and a half miles apart, which means that, yes you can see Russia. Thank you for using ChaCha.”

I’m wondering to myself if the vice presidential hopeful is aware of ChaCha – she certainly could make good use of it on a few occasions.