Facebook Offers New Service - Facebook Questions

Facebook has added yet another feature to their ever growing arsenal. Facebook Questions is their newest feature and will offer users the opportunity to get answers to their questions from the whole Facebook community.

Facebook Questions is similar to other services like Yahoo! Answers and Aardvark. From your homepage, you will be able to click on the "Ask a Question" button and the questions will show up in both the questions section and your friends' walls. Keep in mind that this forum is public, so you should make sure you are asking questions that you really want the whole world to see.

There are some features that makes Facebook's Q&A; feature more appealing than other similar services.

1. You can ask questions about photos - the example that was given in the article by Mashable was that if you have a picture of a bird, and you don't know what type of bird it is, you can post the picture in Facebook's Questions section and allow other people to answer.

2. Polling is made easier using Facebook's Q&A; feature by asking simple questions like What kind of pizza is better: New York Style or Chicago Style? (In my humble opinion, that would be NY style).

3. Tagging will help keep the questions organized and easily filtered.

4. Following questions will be available to ensure that you are kept up-to-date on the most recent answers to your questions, or questions you find interesting.

One thing to keep in mind as businesses try to figure out ways to leverage this new service -- this service is not for advertising. Facebook wants to make sure that they are providing their users with concise and beneficial information, not advertisements. It is expected that businesses with Facebook fan pages will be able to answer questions, however, they should be forewarned that Facebook Questions is not to be used as a promotional platform. That said, this is a perfect opportunity, as a legal or medical professional, to establish yourself as an expert within the Facebook community. To learn more about how Facebook questions can benefit your practice, please read this informative blog for three techniques you can use to leverage this platform.

While Facebook questions was just rolled out to a group of selected beta testers, they promise that they will roll it out community wide before too long. It's sure to be successful considering that they now have over 500 million users!