  We present an intelligent, crowd-powered information collection system that
automatically identifies and asks target-ed strangers on Twitter for desired
information (e.g., cur-rent wait time at a nightclub). Our work includes three
parts. First, we identify a set of features that characterize ones willingness
and readiness to respond based on their exhibited social behavior, including
the content of their tweets and social interaction patterns. Second, we use the
identified features to build a statistical model that predicts ones likelihood
to respond to information solicitations. Third, we develop a recommendation
algorithm that selects a set of targeted strangers using the probabilities
computed by our statistical model with the goal to maximize the over-all
response rate. Our experiments, including several in the real world,
demonstrate the effectiveness of our work.
