This afternoon Facebook announced that it will be rolling out Facebook Questions to all users. Until now it was being beta tested by a small number of users.
Questions now allows you to crowdsource answers to questions from your Facebook friends and friends of friends. This is a big change from the beta Questions, which was more categorical and expert based. Facebook has decided to emphasize social in this feature, which is of course their strength.
Once the feature is active in your account, you will see a new Questions button above your status entry window:
Entering and sharing a question will post it on the feeds of your friends, who may then answer it and/or vote up answers already posted. The response of a friend will generate a notice on the news feed of his or her friends, thus expanding the circle of potential answers.
Here’s what a typical Question news feed notice will look like:
You vote up answers by clicking the check boxes next to them. Notice that you can choose to follow a question-answer thread without posting a response. In addition, when posting an answer, if your answer triggers the name of a Facebook Page, you can make your answer a link to that Page. Facebook marketers, take note!
Questions could have a huge effect on increasing the amount of interaction on Facebook. For Facebook, that translates to more time on the site which means more potential ad revenue.
Marketers may see this as greatly increasing the value of having a Facebook Page for their business.
Will you use Facebook Questions? Do you think it will become a popular feature?