Questions? Facebook Is Working on Answers.
Facebook is testing a new add-on to its social networking service: the ability to ask questions–and get answers–from other people in the online community.
Some people already use Facebook’s status update feature to pose questions to their friends, who leave answers in the comments section. The new service, which has begun popping up on some users’ pages, formalizes the process of asking and answering. Under the live test, some users get a box on the right side of the screen (around the “Pokes”) with potentially interesting questions.
Q&A services are a popular idea among Internet companies looking for a better way to organize the content on the ever-growing Web. Yahoo (YHOO) has had an answers service for everything from homework questions to product recommendations since 2005. Product ratings and reviews company Bazaarvoice offers an “ask and answer” service for product sales pages on e-commerce sites that they say not only increases sales conversion, but also reduces returns.
