Mosio taps into Twitter community for mobile Q&A service
Date : 2008 01 30 Category : Web Webware.com
Mosio the mobile questions and answers service I wrote about last year has a really cool and useful new feature today called Twitter Answers. Mosio users simply need to befriend the Mosio Twitter bot, and ask it any questions using Twitter's direct messaging feature. Other users who have befriended the bot will get your question (syndicated from the bot), and up to four of them can directly reply to you.
While the entire thread is somewhat meaningless with Twitter's lack of message threading, hopping over to Mosio you can see the entire exchange in its correct order. Better yet, if any regular Mosio members are able to answer your question, those answers will be shared over to Twitter.
For Mosio users who want to avoid using their phone's keypad, there is some reprieve. Last month Mosio partnered with Jott to set up a voice-to-text system that lets people ask questions using a standard phone call. Jott will then convert their voice question over to text and post it to the service, while sending any replies back in the form of SMS messages. Other users are able to follow along on Mosio's main page, their phone, and now on Twitter.
I still think one of the best uses of Mosio is to help sort out bar bets or random questions while out and about. Mobile users with a data plan can turn to Google or some other search engine to find out what they're looking for, but services like Mosio, Fluther, and Yahoo Answers provide a human touch in many areas that search engines cannot.
On a side note, Mosio was at SF Beta last night showing this off, and they had by far the most inventive Web swag I've seen in a long time. Witness, the adhesive mustache. How can you not remember this?
Best, Web swag. Ever.
(Credit: CNET Networks)