Businesses have an opportunity to promote themselves and find new customers with Facebook’s new Questions application, which the social networking giant announced overnight.
But the new feature come as Facebook security has once again come into the spotlight, after on savvy internet user revealed he had scraped the information of over 100 million users and posted it online.
Facebook Questions allows users to gain information from other users on any type of topic using a form of crowdsourcing.
It works like this – a user types a question into the app, like “Where can I go surfing in Melbourne?” You then “tag” that question with an interest, like “surfing” or “Melbourne”, and then that question will appear to every user who has already expressed in an interest in that topic in their personal profile.
The social network giant says the new app is all about providing a way for users to gain advantage of the 500 million account holders on the network. You can also make polls, attach photos, and ensure some questions are only provided to the “friends” in your profile.
A database is also available for users to check out answers given by others, and lists of questions asked as well.
The service is only in testing, but some SEO analysts say the concept may have some use for businesses once it becomes more popular.
Reseo chief executive Chris Thomas says that while he hasn’t investigated the new features in-depth, he says businesses should always check out new opportunities to engage with potential customers on social networks.
“I think you should dive in to whatever is happening in your space. You can definitely help and answer questions, and the key is not to do it in any type of pushy way. You can just offer your own knowledge.”
Stewart Media chief executive Jim Stewart says the concept is somewhat like Twitter, and businesses should approach it in the same sort of way – like a conversation, not a product push.
“It’s the same thing that happens with Twitter, in that businesses need to keep an eye out on who needs help with things in order to get your brand out there and reach a bigger audience of people.”
But the announcement may have been overshadowed by another Facebook security scare.
Over 100 million users of the social network site had their data “scarped” by Ron Bowes of Skull Security, who packaged the data and then shared it on popular BitTorrent site Pirate Bay.
Facebook responded by saying the data was “scraped”, not hacked, meaning it was already publically available.
“People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want,” the social network said.
“In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher and already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook.”
However, Bowes said in a blog post it demonstrates just how relaxed users are about their security settings.
“I realised that this is a scary privacy issue. I can find the name of pretty much every person on Facebook. Facebook helpfully informs you that ‘anyone can opt out of appearing here by changing their Search privacy settings’ – but that doesn’t help much anymore considering I already have them all.”
“Once I have the name and URL of a user, I can view, by default, their picture, friends, information about them, and some other details. If the user has set their privacy higher, at the very least I can view their name and picture. So, if any searchable user has friends that are non-searchable, those friends just opted into being searched, like it or not!”
The incident comes after a tumultuous few months for Facebook, during which it scrambled to address various security concerns and even introduced a new, simplified method for hiding users’ data from the public.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
