We introduce the concept of cyber-physical-social-mediated communication (CPS-C) and analyze why CPS-C is better than pure cyber-mediated communication for two popular applications: mobile social networks and mobile crowd sensing. CPS-C utilizes its unique characteristics (i.e., cyber-physical synchronization, human intelligence, and physical displacement) to bring benefits, including natural boundary of information exposure, tangible interaction, targeting receivers on the fly, decentralization, and piggybacking. As a result, energy efficiency and user experience are improved. We highlight the existence of human-machine intelligence in the communication process, which has rarely been addressed.