Another nail in the coffin of how-things-used-to-be-done with details emerging of how Facebook is developing a new service to allow anyone to become an expert.
At the most basic level the Facebook Questions product, currently being tested in-house at Facebook and as part of a private beta, is a system that will be included in the network to allow people to ask simple questions (something that already happens a lot through status updates).
Friends and those within a friend’s own network can offer a response to the question, with each answer then aggregated on a page where other users can simply click on a tick or cross icon to state whether it was valuable or not.
As part of a move to attract people to the beta test, Facebook has given a few example questions:
- What are the main differences between Google Chrome and Internet Explorer?
- What are women looking for in a relationship?
- What methods has BP tried to clean up the oil spill?
- What should I do to prepare for the Bar exam?
- How did The Beatles find success?
Simple enough.
But what if the questions were like these:
- What is the best hotel for a romantic view of the Seine in Paris?
- Can I travel from London to Bangkok with a stop in Mumbai?
- Where is the cheapest car rental booth at Atlanta airport?
In one swift move Facebook has the potential to make every user a travel expert, an agent with a fountain of knowledge about travel destinations and products.
The argument that there will be too many so-called experts and actually not a lot of valuable advice is countered by the addition of the ratings system (similar to Yahoo Answers), effectively pushing the daft or useless responses down the pecking order and ensuring the valuable content stays at the top.
Facebook, according to leaked screenshots of the application, will include a search tool within the system, presumably to let users browse through related questions that are already answered and ranked.
So what makes this development at Facebook so intriguing for travel and different from other Q&A systems on the web, such as Yahoo Answers and the recently launched Quora?
- The first thing to note here is scale. Facebook has over 400 million users worldwide, giving it a huge opportunity to tap into the knowledge base of members, a huge proportion of which have experience of travel and, as everyone knows, enjoying sharing their experiences (the vast quantities of travel-related images and video on the service testifies to that).
- Facebook’s social graph (and the philosophy behind the Like button) is based on the idea of creating trust between users as they interact with content seen on the site and elsewhere on the web. A person becomes a trustworthy source of content to their friends, so the same principle applies with the Questions project – they can become a reliable resource of travel advice to the wider network.
- This is not just about individuals. Facebook allows and encourages companies to create profiles through Fan pages or Groups (as many now do). Companies would be able to get involved with Questions, meaning they could create an entire service around providing responses to travellers on Facebook.
- Once again, if a source of valuable information is a company and their kudos soars then (through their Fan pages) they will have the opportunity to push the user to another level of interaction, or even a product sale on their site. This idea becomes even more compelling when booking and payment modules on Facebook become the norm rather than just the idea of a few.
- Nothing confirmed by Facebook at this stage, but Questions content – privacy settings notwithstanding, of course – may well be available on the wider web through search, opening up a whole host of optimisation requirements.
Finally, it doesn’t take a huge jump to envisage a programme where travel companies nurture and then give incentives to individuals that have a good record of offering valuable advice in order that they push people to their products.
It’s the intermediary and commission model all over again. Except the intermediaries are, well, effectively everyone.
Well, we either evolve or become Dodos! Business is different now. In my own field, I have adopted a new way and will gradually leave my old business model behind.
I have repeated this ad nauseum over the past few years and have been howled down as being anti-agent. All I’m saying to agents is to embrace the inevitable. Be ahead of the game or opt out.
@hoda – I agree.
But equally, something like Facebook Questions brings in new opportunities to existing travel agents, through Fan Pages and simply *getting involved*.
It’s not doom and gloom – it’s just a new challenge.
Indeed! And what do you think of the news that Facebook is about to start charging for its services? That will bring in a interesting new dimension!
Smiles from Hoda
@hoda. be surprised if Facebook does it.
This is a great tool. One that LinkedIn is already using. How many opportunities does the travel professional get to be heard by an audience of 400 million people.
But what is to keep travel agents from getting lost in the din?
@joe r – travel agents offering good advice would help them rise to the top of the trusted charts.
This certainly makes sense for all the reasons mentioned above. I think the most pertinent is the social graph element – in general people are more likely to help out others they know.
I wonder (and hope) if FB would tie in this app to fan pages? Increasingly FB is trying to replace the need for stand alone company websites and this addition could be one step further down the road.
@pete – i think it would be weird for them not to tie it in to Fan Pages, a growing area of the network which fits well to the idea of Q&A.
TripAdvisor has had its forums for some time, where TripAdvisor-annointed ‘experts’ (I would guess many are travel agents) answer questions posted, and those forums get loads and loads of traffic. But it’s not a nice user experience; posts are latest-first and soon disappear off the screen, many of the questions are redundant and searching is not intuitive, so using them can be a big time suck (I’m speaking from experience here!).
Even so, the forums can be really useful for questions like where to find the best currency converter in Buenos Aires or if the apartment I’m considering renting in Prague has a reputable agent or owner. If FB can make the user experience better, I would think people would flock to it, and allow travel agents an opportunity to shine (and link back to their own pages or web sites). And it may force TripAdvisor to address its own usability issues in their forums.
It will have it good and bad as do other sites such as Trip Advisor. People have to realize that EVERYONE has an opinion yet not everyone’s likes and dislikes are the same. It will be helpful for those who want to research on their own, and as a travel agent myself, it is nice when a client has an idea of what type of trip or what destination they want. But this will not make the average person a travel professional, so the buyer beware. If you make a mistake based on a stranger’r recommendation, you will have to live with it.
It will have it good and bad as do other sites such as Trip Advisor. People have to realize that EVERYONE has an opinion yet not everyone’s likes and dislikes are the same. It will be helpful for those who want to research on their own, and as a travel agent myself, it is nice when a client has an idea of what type of trip or what destination they want. But this will not make the average person a travel professional, so the buyer beware. If you make a mistake based on a stranger’s recommendation, you will have to live with it.
Although I spend time with all of my clients, with a goal of educating them so they can make the best choice, I call this “Increasing Each Client’s Travel IQ” ~ My clients have referred to Trip Advisor and The Cruise Critic on their own for opinions of traveler’s and their experiences at certain world locations, Hotels, Resorts and Cruise Lines… before deciding and booking with me.
I have made it a priority to establish a relationship with my clients, they are all loyal and they know they are so much more than a “sale” to me and my my business! With that said, I am not concerned about any new additions involving the Information Networks available to the public! When my clients feel they need more than what I can offer, they will leave regardless of the options they have to plan their vacations.
My advice to those agents complaining and fearful of losing business… is to make sure you offer your clients your credentials to validate you are a true professional agent! Also offer a BLOG or Q&A page on your website and keep adding Subject Sections as questions appear.
All the best to my fellow agents ~ Pleasant Dreams tonight…there is no Boogey Man!
Julia Aliseo
Cruise Planners, American Express Travel
This is a major new step for FB to take over the web business. They already have Discussion tabs on individual group/pages, but with the introduction of Q&As, they will be building this on a global level. The social graph means that just as you can “hide” posts by friends (e.g. I “hide” all quizzes, farmvilles, etc.), you will probably be able to like answers from “useful” people and hide answers from “timewasters”, hence gradually improve the pertinence of answers you read. What will happen to travel search engines like the one I work for? Can we counter-attack by building our own social networks/forums, or do we just have to accept that people will no longer need to use any other website but Facebook?