Facebook revamps and reintroduces Questions

After an initial test run last year, Facebook's making an official go with its Questions application.

Facebook has relaunched its Questions application and turned it into a succinct, sleek, poll-taking machine. There’s nothing Quora-like about this feature: Facebook doesn’t want your personal diatribes about anything. Instead the application works like an addition to the user status and lets you ask your network their opinion and force them to vote for an answer or provide their own.

“We wanted to make questions easier and faster to answer. With the updated Questions you can agree with an existing answer with a single click, or you can add a different response,” writes Facebook staffer Adrian Graham.

Anytime Facebook introduces a new feature, there’s bound to be complaints. This time we think it might have something to do with the visibility of users’ Questions. In order to “cast a wider net,” Facebook has determined that not only your friends, but their friends, can respond to your queries. However, you’ll see your own friends answers first. From the initial look and sound of it, the application is intended to be used for quick poll taking – for example, advice on the best local burger, or quickest way to get to the airport.

And there’s a concrete difference between this and Quora, for anyone feeling like Facebook is taking advantage of the growing site’s niche: The Quora community is exclusive and the Facebook community is not. While users are more than welcome to ask whatever they like on Quora, its focus is definitely not on the trivial. And of course, Facebook is so heavily populated you are more likely to get real time answers from your friends (and their friends).