One of the ways people use Twitter is to ask a question to a large group of people at once: “Does anyone know a good recipe for Lobster Bisque?” “What are the best games for a four-year-old’s pirate birthday party?” “What is the best tech conference to attend this year?”
Whether or not you get a good answer depends on how many people are following you and how smart they are. It’s not like Yahoo Answers where there are millions of people coming to look for and answer each other’s questions. But what if you could combine the two: ask questions via Twitter and find answers via a dedicated Website?
That’s what ToAnswer is. It’s the project of Chuck Harmston, a lone Web designer in Mesa, Arizona. (So try not to pound on it too much). You ask questions by sending a Tweet to @toask, and then anyone can answer the questions on the site. Now, if only the service would Twitter you back every time somebody offers an answer, then I’d be impressed.
Thats fu**ing awesome mate! Love it, must re-blog that …
yahoo answer is only thing i like about yahoo
i might checkout this app
Yes. More stories like this about lesser known sites. Please.
You may have not heard of us http://twithire.com
In the news:
http://www.appscout.com/2008/0.....nd_a_1.php
Mosio launched that a while ago. http://www.Mosio.com
Semantic Twitter is the next huge thing
Ask a question and app searches all tweets per subject, compiles/compares data and then provides the most popular response
Look at the questions on ToAnswer, though - most of them are too specific to expect any tweets that answer the question. For example, “what are the best upcoming edtech conferences/events? and are some in southern ca?” There just aren’t going to be any tweets that are useful for that question asker.
That’s part of the beauty of the ToAnswer concept - instead of only getting the exposure of your Twitter friends, you get the exposure of the entire ToAnswer network.
I do admit that questions with high specificity are unlikely to find answers, but it is more likely to find an answer than a simple Twitter post, no?
Indeed, Chuck. There are for sure(!) people on twitter alone, too, who’ve got answers for niche, geeky questions like that. Perfect fit.
Nice start sir! Now the real work begins. Keep it up.
I have not sat the sofa !
This is simple but good. It can be one useful application for twitter. Twitter should hire this guy!
I have a doubt though, lots of quality answers are gonna be longer than 140 character limit. So the question type is probably more simplistic and more definite unlike open-ended questions on Yahoo Answers
Yeah, character limits will lead to librarian tweeters, right? Bout the only thing you can pass on is a few words and a url reference.
It’s a great concept, one attempted by many so far including the just soft-launched (last month) lazytweet.com, which simply grabs lazy web and/or lazy tweet requests rather than requiring a directed reply, it’s all about embrace and extend. If someone answers, lazytweet will tell you about it.
Others in the field include mosio (@qna), @helpwith, @answerme, and the aborted @dearlazy
Erick posted: “Now, if only the service would Twitter you back every time somebody offers an answer, then I’d be impressed.”
I’m working on it! After ToAnswer becomes a bit more established, I will be applying for an API rate limit hike and implementing a feature where you receive a direct message each time you get a response to a question that you ask.
Thanks for the kind words everyone, it’s very rewarding to see my blood, sweat, and tears pay off.
Well nice idea, I agree with Erick’s last sentence “Now, if only the service would Twitter you back every time somebody offers an answer, then I’d be impressed.”
@answerme (http://atanswerme.com) is a also another little tool to help you track questions you ask on Twitter. Check them out! I’ve used them before and I’ve actually had people respond
Nice.
Chuck, I suggest you implement a search feature. Without one, your service will quickly become unusable. Also, do you think twitter will be cool with you hot linking their images?
your AD banner for I-STAGE is unstanding, noisy and unpleasent
This was done a while ago (see link below) — not through twitter and not modertated terribly well…
http://www.justcurio.us/
Thanks Erick, these apps look interesting…trying out ToAnswer and Mosio today
Now thats really wonderful. Chuck Harmston deserves a salute.
Will definitely use this service.
The site was down for sometime.this TC mention+dreamhost hosting done the job,i guess
Isn’t this one more nail in the coffin of ChaCha? Goes to show what you can do when you DON’T have $16m to burn.
Kudos to Chuck Harmston for this one! I’ll be sharing it with my networks…
Twitter Answers App, powered by Mosio, who won the Mobile Category at SXSW this year. Been around for awhile and it works.
Congrats to toanswer, mosio, and justcurio.us
For people interested in and watching the Q&A space, here’s is another just launched Q&A website:
http://wtf.lolqna.com/x/index
Pretty cool!
WikiAnswers.com, a community where you can ask questions and share your knowledge, has seen tremendous growth this year. Second only to Yahoo Answers in the Q&A space, Hitwise says WikiAnswers traffic puts it
in the Top 20 of Web 2.0 sites
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/us-.....tes_1.html
in India there’s a review site called mouthshut.com
they have recently launched SMS review service
but many people r using it to ask consumer related questions.
the service lets u post sms which gets published on mouthshut homepage.
replies to the sms gets posted on the website itself as well as delivered to the sender of the original message