Red Herring announced its Top 100 award in recognition of the leading private companies from North America, Europe, and Asia, celebrating these startups’ innovations and technologies across their respective industries. Among this year’s winners was ChaCha, the leading question and answer site, which responds to queries on a range of topics including politics, culture, entertainment and sports.

“We are honored to be selected by Red Herring among this distinguished group of private companies,” said Scott Jones, CEO of ChaCha. “Over the past year we’ve seen significant growth at ChaCha, with our monthly site traffic increasing to over 66 million visits -- over three times more than the previous year. With a pipeline of innovative initiatives on the horizon, we are looking forward to game-changing improvements to our platform and continued success in the year ahead.”

Red Herring’s Top 100 Global list has become a mark of distinction for identifying promising new companies and entrepreneurs. Red Herring editors were among the first to recognize that companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Skype, Salesforce.com, YouTube, and eBay would change the way we live and work.

“Choosing the companies with the strongest potential was by no means a small feat,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “After rigorous contemplation and discussion, we narrowed our list down from hundreds of candidates from across Global to the Top 100 Winners. We believe ChaCha embodies the vision, drive and innovation that define a successful entrepreneurial venture. ChaCha should be proud of its accomplishment, as the competition was the strongest it has ever been.”

Red Herring’s editorial staff evaluated the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, technology innovation, management quality, strategy, and market penetration. This assessment of potential is complemented by a review of the track record and standing of startups relative to their peers, allowing Red Herring to see past the “buzz” and make the list a valuable instrument of discovery and advocacy for the most promising new business models from around the world.

About ChaCha

ChaCha is the leading source for free real-time information and answers. Through its unique "ask-a-smart-friend" platform, ChaCha has answered over 2 billion questions since launch from more than 40 million unique users per month via online (ChaCha.com), mobile text (242-242), iPhone app, Android app and voice (1-800-2-ChaCha™). ChaCha is one of the fastest-growing mobile and online publishers according to Nielsen, comScore and Quantcast and was recently named by Forbes as one of America's Most Promising Companies. Follow ChaCha on Twitter: @ChaCha and @ChaChaMan.