What if search results included only answers from experts in a field plus your dearest friends? Would it be cool to get human response from people who know the topic, plus the added personal ideas of your close acquaintances?
Facebook is launching just such a product with its Questions tab, now in beta. As Facebook explains, if you were planning a vacation to Costa Rica and wanted to know the best places to surf, rather than Googling it and parsing out the paid ads and confusing lists of organic findings, you'd simply pose the question inside Facebook. Facebook in turn would serve the question to users who have expressed interest in the topic, plus to your online network of friends. The result is supposedly human, expert and personal.
It's brilliant on several levels. First, Facebook Questions moves beyond the Q&A formats of Answers.com or Aardvark, because rather than drawing on a pool of Wiki-type enthusiasts, the questions can be served to any "expert" in Facebook's 500-million-member database. Second, your personal friends are added to the mix -- unlikely experts, but the real opinions you count on in life. And third, Facebook has unlocked a new potential data set for serving up personalized advertising (because it knows you're about to surf in Costa Rica). The queries will be visible to everyone, so we do have our own questions about privacy. Facebook, who do we ask?
1 comments:
I am curious how much improved over Yahoo Answers this will be. I think we already do this for the specific scenario and have plenty of resources (travel sites, magazines, yelp, city search etc). And I think when we get the 'answers' we will still go and search online to look more in depth for what we chose from those responses.
As I had tweeted my concern is response time. If I am seeking advice on something not urgent it could be a winner. But if I am looking for a restaurant and leaving in 15 mins I won't be waiting (Twitter would be better for this).
I find it interesting. My one Facebook is Evil thought is if they will be using your questions like Google to sell key words so Advertisers will pump stuff at you based on questions. Which is fine if done in a respectful manner. (You know this is coming bank on it) Wouldn't you want a referral from a friend for a Japanese Restaurant front and center vs potentially 20 of them paying Facebook to be on the results page and crowding out your friends answer?
Post a Comment