82Ask relaunches as Texperts

I got a lovely email from Sarah McVittie, CEO of Texperts (formerly 82Ask) explaining what was what with the new name, branding and shortcode. I've been a fan of 82Ask for some time and use it regularly with both work and personal stuff. I've even used it successfully when I've been abroad. I really like their style and at a £1 or less a pop, it's a bargain time and stress-saver.

And having seen how their back end works, it's a really impressive combination of good technology plus great human brain power plus the ability for the system to learn and store answers for future use so the more people use it, the better it gets and with several years knowledge in the database already, they're going great guns. The Texperts are "licensed to find" but I'll let Sarah continue with the story so far...

Sarah says, "We just wanted to let our close 82ASK friends know that today we officially re-launched the service we all know and love as Texperts. In addition, we have a great new shortcode, 66000 and a couple of fantastic new websites that really bring to life the Texperts experience.

We have been studying our service and growth for a while and have identified a change in the composition of the types of questions that we receive. While we are always on hand to to provide you with great factual answers to your specific queries, we have found that more and more people are using us as a service that helps them with their daily lives through the provision of useful and generally time-sensitive information.

Answers to these types of questions needs intelligent human input and we found that you really value knowing that there is a bright person at the end of your question, not just a complex set of algorithms.

Therefore, at the point of significant marketing investment for the first time in our short history, we have decided to re-christen the service after those that make it human and great - the Texperts themselves. We have also managed to get hold of an fantastic new shortcode, 66000. Tests have proven this to be a really memorable number, far superior to 82275.

Although all this change is happening now, and happening fast, be reassured that the team here at Texperts Towers remains the same and indeed the service is just as amazing as it always has been. I think this is reflected in our new website (www.texperts.com) and online Krypton-Factor-for-the-brain game (www.tex-factor.com).

However, for the foreseeable future, you will still be able to access our service on 82275 even though you will notice that your answers are returned on 66000.

This is a very exciting time for us. We truly believe that our offering of a 'mobile find' service is significantly superior to you having to search for the information you need on your mobile phone. So much so, we feel that the time for searching is over.

You might want to check out their blog to find out what they were up to in London in the middle of the night last night accompanied by fellow mobilist Ewan MacLeod. Looks like they were having some fun.

Best of luck to the Texperts with the revamped service - keep up the good work!