Coming up against Siri and Google Now, Ooloo is now being released to both iOS and Android, and it essentially replaces automatic voice recognition with actual human beings.
Ooloo has staff on hand at all times to answer questions of its users, essentially replacing human-machine interaction with human-human interaction. It's being made by the people behind iDrive who are known for making affordable cloud solutions for mobile devices.
Users simply have to pick up their phone and record and questions they might have, after which someone from Ooloo will be on hand to answer it. When the answer is ready, a notification will pop up on the users screen.
Ooloo is being hailed as extremely easy to use, and customers can record questions with nothing more than a single tap. The service also uses things like the user's location to give more relevant answers, and users are then able to provide feedback on the answers that were given.
Initially, there will be a team of around 50 people at any given time ready to answer questions, and the response time for a question is expected to only be a few seconds for simple questions, or a few minutes for more complex ones.
Many people are wondering exactly what makes the service better than services like Siri, as the team behind Ooloo will still be using search engine results to provide answers. The thought is that the answers will be more personal and more in-depth, with a lower rate of irrelevant answers.
One of the main selling points of Ooloo is the fact that it provides a much less dry response, and is able to make jokes and generally be more pleasant.
According to iDrive, data such as questions and answers given to those questions are only stored for 24 hours, and the data also will not be used by the company in any way or shared with any third parties.
Ooloo is also very reminiscent of Ask Jeeves, which was one of the top Internet search companies before automated search engines such as Google and Yahoo took over. Ask Jeeves had staff on hand to ask questions from its users, but the service eventually died with the success of automatic search engines. While Ooloo is still in its early stages, many are wondering if the fate of the service will be the same as Ask Jeeves.
Users can download Ooloo for themselves on Android or iOS powered devices, and as of right now the service is free.
