Information Gathering on Twitter Just Got Easier
I’ve seen a lot of new Twitter services being brought to my attention in the past couple of days. Three of them seemed very interesting, since they all help with gathering information through the Twitter network.
ChaCha Launches Twitter Service
ChaCha, a service where humans answer your questions via SMS, also operates on Twitter. Send your question to @ChaCha and a human guide will respond with an answer and URL. ChaCha is best for finding out small factoids, scores of a game, etc. If you’re looking for some user feedback or recommendations, the next two services will be more useful. This service seems most useful for information on the go, since a quick Google search is probably faster. Read more info about the service.
@Answerme, It’s Like Yahoo Answers for Twitter
I first saw @answerme mentioned a couple days ago and is similar to an idea that I was working on. The tool provides a way for you to ask a question to a larger audience than just your followers. After sending a message to @answerme the question will be posted on the website, and re-tweeted on the account. Any Twitter user can reply to your question by sending a message like “@answerme @pb30 The Mac is superior.” The person who asked the question can then pick a winner. See the complete instructions for more.
PollDaddy Launches Twitter Polls
PollDaddy recently launched Twitter Polls, an easy way to create a poll and post it to your Twitter account. There’s no real special functionality here. But all the configuration is on one page and it doesn’t require a PollDaddy account.
I often hear that the power of Twitter is the ability to find high quality information fast. However this often comes from the A-listers who have thousands of followers. It’s nice to see some tools to even out the playing field.
