Last month Facebook launched a new feature called Facebook Questions which allows you to easily poll your friends. Around the web, people have compared Facebook Questions to similar services like Yahoo! Answers, Quora, or Mahalo.

However, the great thing about Facebook Questions is that it’s already integrated into the powerful ecosystem that is Facebook. You simply write up a question, create some multiple choice options, and then post it to your wall. This makes it easy to compile quantitative data, as opposed to asking a question in plain text and then sifting through a list of comments.

Facebook Questions is a great step toward extracting added value from utilizing social media. Why? Because Facebook Questions aren’t exclusive to user profiles; You can also ask Questions on a Facebook Page. This is a very powerful tool for Page owners, because you’re able to quickly gather market research from your existing community, negating some of the need for site surveys, contests, and more intrusive methods.

For example, say that you run a bakery, and you need to decide between three different baked goods for next week. Why not crowd source the decision to your Facebook fans (likely your best customers) and ask them what they would like to buy? With a large enough sample size, a perfectly split result is quite rare, so you should be able to make business decisions more confidently.

There’s no word yet on whether or not Questions will be coming to Groups, but it certainly is fascinating to watch Facebook continue to evolve. What do you think of Facebook Questions so far?

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