July 31, 2010 by Simon King
In a step to enhance the service it provides to users, Facebook has been trialing a new search feature on its site. Questions is a new service which enables users of the site to post up queries, which can be answered by the five million registered users on the site.
As a trial, the function has been made available to a small number of members, and it is hoped that the service will be enhanced and refined over time as more is learned about how it will operate. The application is launching in to the same online market space as competitor services such as Twitter, Ask.com and Yahoo Answers.
Danny Sullivan, spokesperson for Search Engine Land stated: “The core of search is a question. For thousands of years we asked questions of people that we trusted. Then around 15 years ago we underwent an incredible revolution with the arrival of search engines. Questions is a return to this age of more personalised search. You can now put questions out there in a way we used to do before everyone was online. It’s very difficult to challenge Google as general search leader. Indexing and ranking the web is very expensive and Facebook has no skills in doing that. But what they do have is social connections, which allows users to put out those questions to others who they trust.”
Facebook users will be able to type up questions and queries, and invite other members to post the answers with an ‘Ask Question’ button. Operating with wiki mentality, the answers will be completely governed by public opinion.
An analyst at Forrester has commented on the motivation behind Facebook’s new feature: “It is looking to generate more data on its users. The more they can get people to raise their hands and say ‘I want to know more about a subject’ or ‘I am an expert in a topic’, the more it allows them to target marketing and advertising. Whenever it does anything new these days, you have to ask how does it help them collect more data and learn more about its users.”
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