Facebook and Beyond

Everybody uses Facebook, right? (Or at least it seems that way!)

Recognizing that, Facebook has begun to roll out a new "Questions" feature. Available only to selected users at this time, the idea is that you would ask a question, and get answers from the entire facebook community.

Asking questions online is hardly a new concept. Yahoo, answers.com, wiki, Quora,Trulia and countless others have does this for 'eons' (in technology world time anyway).  But facebook is a MUCH bigger "pool" to fish for answers from, so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

Currently millions ask questions via twitter, so I see this as one more way that facebook is trying to compete with that playground.

According to Mashable, questions will have these features:

• Photo questions: For example, if you take a picture of a bird, but don’t know what species it is, you can post the picture on Facebook Questions and get your answer.
• Polling: If you’re simply looking for the answer to Which city is better: Chicago or Dallas?, you can get your answer by creating a poll.
• Tagging: The company seems to be placing a lot of emphasis on tagging questions based on category or topic. The goal seems to be to make Q&A discovery an easier and faster process by making it simple to look up questions on cooking, photography, San Francisco or a variety of other topics.
• Topic exploration: Facebook described this as a roulette-type feature that allows users to browse Facebook’s eventual mountain of Q&A. Under the “Questions about” drop-down menu, there’s a feature called “Everything” that allows users to browse the company’s catalog of questions.
• Following: You can follow specific questions for updates and new answers.
• Updated homepage: Facebook Questions does actually change the homepage, adding a new bar at the top of the page where you can choose to update your status, ask a question, add photos, or post a link.

Facebook makes it clear that Facebook Questions is an advertising product. While brands with Facebook Pages will eventually be able to answer questions, it’s not meant to be a promotional platform; it’s meant to be a useful and insightful product for users.