Ask the right question

It's easy to ask a question.  But it's difficult to ask the right question.  Right question gets you closer to the answer by either simplifying the problem, clarifying the boundaries, forcing you to check your assumptions or examining what you know and what you don't know so that you can subdivide the problem into smaller problems.

What questions to ask;
that is the question

Once you know what questions to ask, it all comes down to execution.  You just have to figure out how to answer those questions and while doing that the process of answering will reveal the path in solving the problem at hand.  I really believe this is to be the case from my experience in dealing with real-world problems.

So today I wanted to share with you questions that I've been asking myself recently.  Hopefully they will reveal what I am seeing in social media and high tech industry and show a glimpse of how they may be answered.

• Is Facebook at its peak in year 2012 measured by average time spent by Facebook user?
• What percentage of Facebook users own multiple accounts against its Terms of Use?
• What is one of the practical ways to indicate social context to a social media user?
• What is the role of anonymity in fostering constructive discussion?
• Will large number of social networks start to get federated to form universal social graph, ever?
• As pendulum swung to increased sharing and less privacy in past several years, what are the opportunities that are opening up that previously did not exist?
• As more people carry internet-enabled mobile devices and access their data instantly, what will be the next thing that people will do?

As I'm writing them down, I think I have a few starting thoughts on how I might be answer them.  Do you have any question that you are thinking of?  Why not share with rest of us?