Posted by Dave Taylor

Facebook has introduced a new “Ask Question” feature. Can you give us a quick demo of how it works and offer some thoughts on how to best use it, Dave?

Dave’s Answer:

In its quest to be all things to every user, Facebook has again tweaked its interface, adding a feature that Yahoo Answers has had for eons, that Google’s experimented with variously, that’s been part of LinkedIn for a while, and that’s obviously near and dear to my heart with Ask Dave Taylor: the ability to ask your followers and fans a question.

On Facebook, it’s called “Ask Question”, ingeniously enough, and it’s actually pretty neat how they’ve integrated it into the newsfeed and interface, though I’m sure not everyone agrees. Maybe we should ask them!

More seriously, I will also say that in the week or two since the feature was released, I haven’t seen a single question show up in my news, so perhaps it’s not getting the widespread adoption that the Facebook team were hoping?

Anyway, on your main page, instead of the status box ready for input, there’s now a little strip of links along the top, one of which is “Ask Question”:

You can see here that I’ve clicked on “Ask Question” and typed in what I believe is a perfectly reasonable question (at least if you’ve seen the daft film Monty Python and the Holy Grail). To submit the question, I click on the “Ask Question” button and, since it’s the first time I’ve asked a question…

Yeah, yeah, I’m good with this. I click on “Ask Question” and it offers the ability for me to add photos, add a further description, even turn it into a poll (that’s cool!). I can also add topics, which are presumably keywords, but I’ll skip it all and just choose “Done”.

Now in my newsfeed – and presumably that of everyone I’m friends with – this shows up:

A short time later my friend Steve pops up with the correct answer:

Notice here that I can vote the answer helpful / not helpful by clicking on the buttons. Nice. In fact, I like Q&A systems that let you vote on the value of an answer, so I have to say that Facebook took its time and did a very nice job implementing the Ask Question feature. Now the real question: is anyone going to use it?

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 2nd, 2010 at 9:13 am and is filed under Facebook, Social Media, Tips. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About the Author: Dave Taylor is known as an expert on both business and technology issues. Holder of an MSEd and MBA, author of twenty books and founder of four startups, he also runs a marketing company and consults with firms seeking the best approach to working with weblogs and social networks. Dave is an award-winning speaker and frequent guest on radio and podcast programs. AskDaveTaylor.com http://www.intuitive.com/blog/