Facebook Rolling Out Questions Feature

Enter Facebook Questions which was announced yesterday in the Facebook blogand is being slow rolled out to the Facebook community at large.People ask a lot of questions. It's natural and it makes sense. It's the only way we can acquire information that we don't currently have. The biggest problem with any question is finding the best source to ask. We have friends and family but they can only go so far in many cases. We have search engines but sometimes you need something else, right?

Today we're introducing Facebook Questions, a beta product that lets you pose questions like these to the Facebook community. With this new application, you can get a broader set of answers and learn valuable information from people knowledgeable on a range of topics.
Since we like to develop products carefully over time with your help, Facebook Questions is available to a limited number of people right now, and we'll be developing it rapidly based on their feedback. We're aiming to bring this product to all of you as quickly as we can.

Here is the box you will see when you are included in the effort

It's an idea that can certainly be of interest if you feel that you can trust someone that you have never met before and have no idea if they are real or not. In other words, there will be value here but how it fits for you will depend on your willingness to trust. Here are some examples given in the blog

Facebook Questions helps you tap into the collective knowledge of the more than 500 million people on Facebook. For example, if you're vacationing in Costa Rica and want to know the best places to surf, you can use Facebook Questions to get answers from nearby surfing enthusiasts. Because questions will also appear to your friends and their friends, you'll receive answers that are more personalized to you.

It appears as if the whole privacy thing has certainly impacted everything Facebook does since this is stated in the post as well.

Keep in mind that all questions and answers posted using the Questions application are public and visible to everyone on the Internet. If you only want to ask a question to your friends or a specific group of people, you can still pose it as a status update on your profile targeted to those people.

You will be able to set up polls and post photos of things that you are asking questions of as well.

Sounds interesting but it is something that should be used with caution considering that you are asking the entire community a question thus opening yourself up to everything else that can come along with that kind of exposure.

So my question to you is, do you think that you would use Facebook Questions to find your answers to the things you are curious about? What kinds of questions would you ask to everyone and what others might you not be so public with? For me, I'll stick to a status update to my friends only for now.However, some people find that even family recommendations need more verification.

In this new world order, it is important to weigh the risks of of jumping into the 'personal crowdsourcing' waters. You never know what sharks may be lurking.

Your thoughts?

Posted by Frank Reed on July 29, 2010.