On the Facebook blog there's an interesting post called Searching for Answers? which should be of some concern to Google. If you remember, Google tried Google Answers a while ago now, and was blown out of the water by Yahoo Answers, which was a much more social resource - early evidence that Google didn't (and to my mind still doesn't) fully get social media. This product will allow you to ask the 500,000,000 on Facebook a question about whatever you like, and they're introducing it slowly over time.
Apparently (I've not seen it yet, since it's not reached me) you'll see your friends questions and vice versa you'll receive answers that are more personalised to you. Quite how that works out I'm not sure, because if you're asking a bunch of people it's not going to be personalised - the only personalisation is that you'll see the questions your friends ask, and what if you don't actually want that? Last thing you'll want them to see is a question like 'How can I cheat on my girlfriend?' Of course, if you just want to ask your friends a question you can already do that via status updates and lists.
You'll be able to attach a photograph or a poll to the question as well. You can also tag your question to focus it a little more closely, and you'll be able to volunteer to answer questions in specific areas. This is very much along the Aardvark line of getting almost instant answers via Google chat, though the big difference is that Aardvark questions remain private, while Facebook ones are public. Once again Google has missed out on an opportunity here, which Facebook is grabbing. In a fairly short space of time Facebook will have a huge pile of data that is going to be searchable, and I suspect people will often prefer to stay on Facebook to ask their questions rather than go elsewhere.
The obvious concern of course is that the answers are going to be opinions as much as anything else, so will be open to interpretation. There's a lot of evaluation that will be needed to sift out good responses, but I wonder at the extent that'll happen. If Facebook wants to overcome this they might be well advised to go down a voting route as Yahoo did, ending up with expert answerers. It's a great idea for Facebook to do this, but not so much a great idea for the rest of us though, since I have considerable doubts as to how useful, valuable and accurate the data they get will be. If Google arn't already doing their own 'Google Me' social network, they really do need to get their skates on because they're going to get left behind very quickly in this particular arena.
Apparently (I've not seen it yet, since it's not reached me) you'll see your friends questions and vice versa you'll receive answers that are more personalised to you. Quite how that works out I'm not sure, because if you're asking a bunch of people it's not going to be personalised - the only personalisation is that you'll see the questions your friends ask, and what if you don't actually want that? Last thing you'll want them to see is a question like 'How can I cheat on my girlfriend?' Of course, if you just want to ask your friends a question you can already do that via status updates and lists.
You'll be able to attach a photograph or a poll to the question as well. You can also tag your question to focus it a little more closely, and you'll be able to volunteer to answer questions in specific areas. This is very much along the Aardvark line of getting almost instant answers via Google chat, though the big difference is that Aardvark questions remain private, while Facebook ones are public. Once again Google has missed out on an opportunity here, which Facebook is grabbing. In a fairly short space of time Facebook will have a huge pile of data that is going to be searchable, and I suspect people will often prefer to stay on Facebook to ask their questions rather than go elsewhere.
The obvious concern of course is that the answers are going to be opinions as much as anything else, so will be open to interpretation. There's a lot of evaluation that will be needed to sift out good responses, but I wonder at the extent that'll happen. If Facebook wants to overcome this they might be well advised to go down a voting route as Yahoo did, ending up with expert answerers. It's a great idea for Facebook to do this, but not so much a great idea for the rest of us though, since I have considerable doubts as to how useful, valuable and accurate the data they get will be. If Google arn't already doing their own 'Google Me' social network, they really do need to get their skates on because they're going to get left behind very quickly in this particular arena.
To be honest I'm a bit worried about facebook taking over the whole of the internet but I like the idea of having a Q&A section like Yahoo answers. I find Yahoo answers quite handy and obviously with Facebooks millions of users it could also become a great resource, let's wait and see how good it is.
Claire.
Posted by: Claire @ freebie jeebies | August 11, 2010 at 10:31 AM
Looks like there's no stopping Facebook in the near future, eh?!
Posted by: SEOP | August 26, 2010 at 06:42 AM