Facebooks new 'Questions'. A new approach to Q & A threads.

[Alpha1]

Have you picked up on their new 'Questions' system?

Its allows you to ask a question and then bring it to the attention of everyone who likes a certain topic and your friends of course. Then those interested in the matter can respond to the thread.

I dont find it unlikely that this will become popular and will start to rival forums, because it addresses / invites people interested in answering the questions. Much different to Yahoo answers. And its reach is very large, so it may well be able to focus large number of people that would otherwise turn to niche forums.

http://www.facebook.com/questions/

 

[Dean]

I think it will depend on the questions being asked?

What band should I listen to next? vs something technical only in a niche forum?

My hunch is face book questions could be an issue for at least some forum owners.

 

[D37]

Are they trying to replace forums or something?

 

[Paul B]

Are they trying to replace forums or something?

Well they've bought drop.io so my guess is they're trying to replace everything.

 

[anotheralias]

And its reach is very large, so it may well be able to focus large number of people that would otherwise turn to niche forums.

Would the questions and answers come up in a Google search? That's the part that I think would be devastating.

I think it will depend on the questions being asked?

What band should I listen to next? vs something technical only in a niche forum?

I think it might depend on how many people answer the questions. A dead topic is a dead topic, whether it's called a question or a thread. If people view the questions as an annoyance then it'll die out quickly. But if someone can pose a question and get hundreds of fast replies, versus posting a thread and getting dozens of replies over time ... they're going to go with instant gratification.

The worst part, I think: nobody will have to register for a forum in order to ask a question.

 

[D37]

Would the questions and answers come up in a Google search? That's the part that I think would be devastating.



I think it might depend on how many people answer the questions. A dead topic is a dead topic, whether it's called a question or a thread. If people view the questions as an annoyance then it'll die out quickly. But if someone can pose a question and get hundreds of fast replies, versus posting a thread and getting dozens of replies over time ... they're going to go with instant gratification.

The worst part, I think: nobody will have to register for a forum in order to ask a question.

It doesn't look good for forums.

 

[Carlos]

Yeah, I think this is an attack on forums...however, this feature has been going on for quite some time: Yahoo implemented a similar service. Not sure about google, or myspace, or twitter...but that's what I know.

 

[Jason]

Have you picked up on their new 'Questions' system?

Its allows you to ask a question and then bring it to the attention of everyone who likes a certain topic and your friends of course. Then those interested in the matter can respond to the thread.

I dont find it unlikely that this will become popular and will start to rival forums, because it addresses / invites people interested in answering the questions. Much different to Yahoo answers. And its reach is very large, so it may well be able to focus large number of people that would otherwise turn to niche forums.

http://www.facebook.com/questions/

The idea is that you can get answers from individuals who are knowledgeable in the subject your question pertains to, and your friends who supposedly know you better than anyone else. As one of the beta testers for Questions, I've gotten to play around with it some and immediately it reminded me of Quora and Yahoo Answers, except you can also post photos and even start polls. Everything is public, again, like Quora and Yahoo Answers.

Anyway, imo, it doesn't blow any of the other services out of the water, and if it does become successful it will be due to the sheer reach of Facebook (e.g., 500 million users), not because the product is inherently better. That is though if they ever fully roll this thing out. I first became a beta tester for it nearly 5 months ago, and to this day none of my friends have access to it. Though they continue to promise they'll be opening it up to other FB users in the "next few weeks".

As for being a forum killer, I don't see it. It's not conducive to discussion on a particular question or other's answers, which is something forums still shine at.

 

[D37]

Well said Jason

 

[anotheralias]

As for being a forum killer, I don't see it. It's not conducive to discussion on a particular question or other's answers, which is something forums still shine at.

I hope you're right, but this is my theory for why Facebook is so popular: most people aren't actually all that interested in a discussion - they're interested in talking about themselves. And if they can do that on a huge stage instead of in a small club, they'll take the huge stage.

 

[Darfuria]

Just one more reason to avoid Facebook, methinks.

 

[anotheralias]

Oh, I don't even have an account. I hate absolutely everything about it. And I do think there are people out there who enjoy an actual discussion -- but it's a smaller pool, and there are a lot of boards vying for their membership.

 

[Teddy Scott]

Look at it this way. Nothing last forever... Just ask Bill Gates! DOOOOH!!!

 

[Floris]

Yeah, we EU ppl can't view that page. It's for the US only as far as I understand.

 

[Elizabeth]

The idea is that you can get answers from individuals who are knowledgeable in the subject your question pertains to, and your friends who supposedly know you better than anyone else. As one of the beta testers for Questions, I've gotten to play around with it some and immediately it reminded me of Quora and Yahoo Answers, except you can also post photos and even start polls. Everything is public, again, like Quora and Yahoo Answers.

If it works as well as Yahoo Answers does, we have NOTHING to worry about. I am a member of http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/GroupManagersForum/ which is one of the oldest/largest group manager email lists available. The list archives are also publicly search-able. So search for this message since I can not quote messages: Message #33679 Nov 8, 2010 11:29 pm I can tell you that what the mod said about Yahoo Answers was NOT polite. To be honest, it's not much better than most of the public google groups that are full of spam.

 

[Dean]

I'm not sure spam, impolite responses, or any other undesirable pieces of information makes any difference at all with a system like this:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/i...?qid=20061214092829AA7C4Ek&show=3#yan-answers

Original question(from 4 years ago): "Would Plasma TV be a better choice than LCD TV?"

Best answer: 53 thumbs up, 3 thumbs down
next best answer: 75 thumbs up, 15 thumbs down
next best answer: 53 thumbs up, 9 thumbs down
next best answer: 28 thumbs up, 9 thumbs down
etc....
and there are 318 answers.

That is the type of system that worries me. People scrambling to post the 'best' answer so as to get a positive reputation in groups like that. If there are 500M facebook users, and only 1% are interested in using the FB 'Questions' system... that is 5 million users.

They could get bored with their normal face book activities for a few minutes, then take a quick look at the fb answers area, and answer what they can.

I have no idea how fb questions are set up, but however they are set up initially, they could be changed/improved.