Yesterday, Facebook released a new version of its Questions feature after close to a year of beta testing.
The updated Questions feature will take the focus off of public questioning and instead concentrate on soliciting friends recommendations. Adrian Graham, a manager for Questions said, “There are a lot of places you can go on the internet to ask questions of people who you don’t know, but there are very few places you can go to get responses from your friends.”
As usual, an updated version of anything first uses testers to smooth over any kinks there may be, so the new version of Questions will be only available to current testers before its fully available to everyone. How it works is when a user starts asking questions, the feature has been programed to instinctively push itself to friends. For those who don’t want to wait for a Facebook Friend to ask them a question so they can try out the new update, click here to download it. Note: it is currently only available in English.
Facebook users who ask a Question, will have the ability to create a poll with limited answers or one that allows those answering to create their own answer. The second option allows friends to make helpful suggestions. For example, if a friend is looking for a nice place to take a date, friends can easily add in their favorite place to the answer list instead of being limited to the options on the Questions poll. Also, if they want to note something about their answer, they can attach a comment to it.
Some questions don’t work with the Questions format. For example, “Let’s discuss how and why people should go to college instead of go straight in to the workforce.” This type of question becomes open ended and doesn’t quite work.
Before Facebook‘s new release of Questions, wall posts about Questions were isolated to single pages where friends could go to respond. Now, Questions allows the polls to be answered or commented on within friends profile pages or within news feeds.
When a friend answers or comments on a poll, the question is also posted to their profile increasing the capability of a poll spreading quickly.
As users vote on the polls, they can view the polls popularity and see the results at the same time. Profile photos of those who have responded are displayed next to their responses.What do you think about this new social media feature?
