Of course, Read/WriteWeb compares it to Twitter rather than, say, Yahoo Answers (which is the first product that I would think to compare it to).

Whatever comparison you make, though, Aardvark sounds pretty cool. (Too bad the URL http://www.aardvark.com was already taken, leaving them with the awkward vark.com)

Basically, what Aardvark does (or will do, when it’s out of beta) is allow you to send questions to your instant messaging client (provided that you use Gmail, AIM, or MSN Live Messenger) and get answers back.

In the RWW post there is another picture with a real demonstration of an Aardvark user looking for book recommendations for someone who likes Neal Stephenson. As someone who likes Neal Stephenson, this is a great example (and I’m sure it was chosen since it would appeal to tech geeks who tend to be Stephenson’s usual audience). Again, as someone who likes Stephenson, and related authors, I can say that the recommendations given by the Aardvark responses were really very good.

RWW had 25 beta invites, but those are gone now. I’ve signed up to get my own, so I’ll just have to wait and see.