WebProNews

Tag: Questions

  • Foursquare Asks Users to Help Make the App More Informative

    Foursquare has spent the past year or so making a bunch of alterations to its apps with one clear goal in mind: Foursquare wants to be the go-to place for local search and discovery. Foursquare is taking on Yelp, Google Places, Urbanspoon, and more. Remember that “going beyond the check-in” line that Foursquare has been using for years? Well, now they’re getting serious about it.

    Earlier this year, a major app update put local search and recommendations front and center, and since then Foursquare has been making tweaks to turn the app into a premier place to find information about locations. For one, they completely redesigned them to make them more photo-rich and to contain more of the info that users want when looking for a place to eat, drink, or see a show on the go. A couple of months ago, they expanded menus on restaurant pages in a partnership with Locu.

    Today, they’re looking to make business pages even more informative by crowdsourcing their research. With an app update, Foursquare is bringing quick questions to the app that ask users about key features of the locations they’re checking into.

    For instance, after you check-in to a restaurant, Foursquare might ask you if the place has free Wi-Fi…or if it has outdoor seating…or if they accept all types of credit cards.

    Basically, Foursquare wants users to help them display more information on business pages.

    Speaking of Foursquare and businesses, the company recently opened up their self-serve ad platform to thousands of small businesses – and they are continuing to allow more businesses to apply for the program every day.

    The last major app update to Foursquare for iOS was dedicated to speed improvements, making the app start up and load locations for check-ins twice as fast.

    You can grab the new Foursquare for iOS and Android today.

  • Facebook Questions Get the Hook

    So long, Facebook Questions. We barely knew ye, nor ever really cared to.

    Facebook Questions debuted in the summer of 2010 and gave users the ability to post public queries to their friends. Who’s the best Backstreet Boy? What’s the best pizza place in town? Whatever. The product saw some buzz at the very beginning but soon became a mostly forgotten feature.

    And then Facebook did the big revamp in the Spring of 2011. They said the new Questions was all about your friends and finding useful information via polls. The new product allowed users to designate multiple choice answers or allow for long-form responses. When that happened, I saw a decent amount of questions in my news feed for a little while. And then, just like before, crickets.

    Now, Facebook is shutting it down – for the most part. Facebook told TechCrunch that they are yanking the Questions option from the top of users’ news feeds (next to update status and add photo/video). It’s already happening:

    Facebook Questions leave news feed

    Questions will still be available for Groups and on Pages – which is really where they belong anyways (if anywhere). As a page owner, I can still select “Question” from the “Offer, Event +” tab in the update box.

    Users can also get to all their old Questions in the Activity Feed.

    Are you sad to see Questions go? Did you even notice that Questions were still on option in your update box?

  • Where Is The Universe?

    Have you ever asked yourself “Where am I?” “What am I?” “Who am I?”; Have you ever just stopped to ask “where is the universe?”

    As Robert Lanza, M.D. of Wake Forest has a very interesting article, where he explains that as children we are taught that the universe is divided into 2 entities; ourselves and everything outside us. The humanistic mind sees this as logical, relavent. Things we can control, often ourselves give us a feeling of superiority, which makes us forget momentarily about the universe. For example: I can control my fingers, but I cannot turn your head left or right without physically touching you; we are individuals in control, that represents the line between self and non-self.

    Take for example when an amputee loses a limb, the piece is missing, but for some reason the subject can still “feel” his or her missing apendage. One explanation is, the brain still perceives, even amongst the diminished limb, it as there.

    “I think, therefore I am” this is a crude phrase for one of the most basic principles of philosophy; all knowledge, truth and principles of being, must begin at the individual sensation of self. The subject of the sense of self has been covered by many writers, philosophers and religious groups. These groups believe that there is an independent “self”.

    Flip the script and the opposite of this is felt when your thinking ceases. Many people have had an almost out-of-body-experience in moments like watching their child play. Some fully realize this sensation and others may shrug it off as just a silly feeling. “Day-dreaming” we call it. The individual is momentarily out of conventional thinking or humanistic mindsets; it’s beyond common existence. You get that feeling as if you’re not actually there, but things are so much more clear and you are, in fact, physically in reality, but your consciousness is elsewhere.

    Now, you may ask yourself where is this plane of outward existence? It’s a fascinating topic, which Lanza explores in depth in his essay.

  • Facebook Questions Revamped

    Facebook Questions Revamped

    When the beta version of Facebook questions debuted in the summer of 2010, it was large and in charge – of your news feed that is.  Yes, the old Facebook Questions got to be sickeningly annoying to this writer.  Today, the official Facebook blog announced an update and relaunch of the mostly forgotten feature.

    When Facebook announced the beta Questions in June 2010, they made it clear that it was meant to become a giant database that was full of questions and answers from the entirety of Facebook that could be browsed by keywords.  They even wrote a disclaimer warning just how public the Questions content was going to be:

    Keep in mind that all questions and answers posted using the Questions application are public and visible to everyone on the Internet. If you only want to ask a question to your friends or a specific group of people, you can still pose it as a status update on your profile targeted to those people.

    The new Questions is based around your friends, and possibly your friend’s friends.  Look at the difference between the blog post above and what was said today about the feature:

    Friends are often the best source of advice when you’re trying new things: Where should I go to dinner? How do I go buy a car? What new music should I check out? Friends know your tastes, and you have confidence in their opinions…for more unusual questions, you can get advice from a broader group of people, but to keep it most relevant we filter the answers to show you first what your friends think. You can see more responses by clicking “others” within the question.

    Sounds better.

    The new Questions allows you to pose questions of your friends that can be either answered in long-format or you can provide a multiple choice answer box – or both.  The multiple choice option ends up working like a poll that keeps track of how many votes each answer has received and who voted for them.  They will then organically appear in your news feed.  As you can see below, there is the opportunity to answer both useless and though provoking questions in the same breath.

    If you want to comment or simply see other people’s comments about the question, you are directed to a little pop-up.  You can filter what comments you see by friends or everyone.

    It appears that Facebook wants questions to truly become as much a part of the service as status updates or photo uploading, as it has added the option among the top of your feed.

    I’m not sure how many times I’ll have to be asked who my favorite Backstreet Boy was before I get angry and throw my monitor, but the new format could prove to be helpful in finding a good restaurant in a new city or in deciding which movie to see over the weekend.