Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Trivia hunters ask the textperts

Having just completed his PhD at Cambridge, Tom Ellis knows plenty about DNA.

But thanks to his current line of work, he is also in the enviable - and perhaps slightly disturbing - position of knowing exactly what questions are on the mind of the nation.

Tom is one of a growing band of textperts - people working for companies whose business is answering questions sent to them by text message.

While the number of questions received by the company is a commercial secret, they easily run into the hundreds each hour during the day and early evening.

Each answer they receive costs £1, expensive for a bit of indulgent trivia-hunting but perhaps better value if it is information needed quickly and reliably.

Month-on-month growth has been close to 30%.

*Ponders*

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