Facebook to discontinue Questions feature

A Cnet report confirms that Facebook is slowly pulling its Questions feature out of the picture. A Facebook representative said that the decison has been made so that Facebook could focus on other things. The Questions feature will be unavailable for user access soon, it will still be available on Groups and Pages. Facebook Questions, which was launched in beta in 2010, allowed users to ask their friends and other Facebook contacts mutiple-choice questions, thus enabling users to poll there friends and the Facebook user base at large.

The report added further, “Search, in particular, has been a pretty hot topic for the company in the past few months. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said that Facebook is "pretty uniquely positioned to answer a lot of questions people have." It's sort of "friend mining" -- as CNET pointed out last month -- extracting specific answers to a question by mining the immensely data-rich social graph.”

Discontinuing Questions

In related news, Facebook is offering Rs 50 worth of mobile talk time to its selective users in India joining the social network through referrals. The system is very new, and the program in India is one of the tests being carried out. As confirmed by Kevin D'Souza, Country Growth Manager, Facebook, the amount of recharge will vary from user to user and place to place. 

D’Souza went ahead and also confirmed that the offer was for users coming through referrals. He was quoted as saying at a press conference, "We keep on trying new things. Because we do not know what will work. This is one of the tests. Just to get a feel of it, this particular test is being done in India.” 

Only this week, Facebook’s "The Anti-Virus Marketplace" or The AV Marketplace got updated to accommodate seven new partners to its existing network of security companies. What this means is that now Facebook users will be able to download software from avast!, AVG, Avira, Kaspersky, Panda, Total Defense, and Webroot. Users will also have access to new anti-virus software for their mobile devices from many of Facebook's existing partners such as Microsoft, McAfee, Norton, TrendMicro, and Sophos. A user can download free anti-virus software for his or her PCs, Macs, and mobiles from the AV Marketplace. 

If you have been spotting a slightly different looking top navigation bar in your Facebook account, then you are among the chosen few on whose profiles Facebook is testing it. Inside Facebook now reports that some users have been spotting a rather different-looking top navigation bar, in which the Search bar has been pushed closer to the company logo. The icons to view friend requests, messages, and other activity notifications have been moved further right on the bar. In fact, closer inspection reveals that Facebook has completely done away with the 'Home' button. Users viewing the test design have to click on the Facebook logo to go to their news feed. 

Facebook introduced to user profiles in the recent past remains the Timeline.