How To Ask Questions and Get Honest Answers

As social networks become more prominent in the lives of the modern day digerati, more and more social relationships are moving online. One of the most glaring features missing from the major social networks is the ability to be anonymous.

Everything we do on social networks is connected to our actual identities - whether it be updating friends on recent happenings or uploading photos of our latest excursions. At the same time, many people have the desire to use the anonymous nature of the internet to find out more about their friends. One of the most basic, human questions that everyone wonders about is: What do my friends really think of me?

A few new services have come out of the woodwork to help answer this question on the back of many minds. Formspring.me is a service that hasn't been around for very long, but came out of nowhere to rule the attention spans of many adolescents. Once you sign up for a profile, you can let your friends ask you anonymous questions about anything; you choose whether or not you want to answer it.

Another service has recently launched into beta that takes the opposite approach of Formspring. Feedbark.com is a social service that lets users ask questions and get anonymous answers. In the spirit of Formspring, Feedbark lets users turn the table on their friends and ask them questions instead. The interesting thing is that the questions can actually be answered by anybody, users or not. Thus, the questions may range from silly ones such as "What do you think aliens look like?" to more personal questions such as "Am I a good friend?"

These services are definitely interesting social experiments, as it brings back the anonymity of the internet and applies it to online social relations. If you're not afraid of what people might say, and want to scratch that curious urge, you should give one of these sites a spin and get some honest opinions.