People have been using Social Networks to search for help by broadcasting messages that reflect their information needs. However, several factors, usually not considered by the user, influence the outcome of receiving or not an answer. In this work, we aim to increase the users’ chances of finding someone who could help them. For this purpose, we propose a mobile app called Social Query, which guides the users through some steps before they share the problem with their friends. As far as we know, this is the first work to merge these three aspects of the social search: Question Rephrasing, Expert Search Filtering and Expertise Finding. To evaluate our proposal, we ran a questionnaire in which users considered Useful most functions of the app.

1. Enhancing the Status Message Question
Asking Process on Facebook
Cleyton Souza (UFCG)
Jonathas Magalhães (UFCG)
Evandro Costa (UFAL)
Joseana Fechine (UFCG)
Ruan Reis (UFCG)

2. Social Query
• What is Social Query?
– Also known as Social Question or Status Message
Question Asking
– A hot research topic
• How to enhance the chances of receiving
answer?
– The usual thought: Directing questions to experts.
– But: there are other ways.
cleyton.caetano.souza@copin.ufcg.edu.br 2

3. Examples
• Shorter questions are more likely to receiving
answers than Longer questions
• Adding a ‘?’ increase the likelihood of
receiving help
• Opinion Request is more likely to receive
answer than other types of problems
cleyton.caetano.souza@copin.ufcg.edu.br 3

4. Proposal
• We are proposing a tool that helps users to
increase their chances of receiving help
considering several factors.
• This is a project in its early stages
– We are thinking in a two version prototype
– This work present the first prototype
cleyton.caetano.souza@copin.ufcg.edu.br 4

5. Proposal
cleyton.caetano.souza@copin.ufcg.edu.br 5

6. Proposal
cleyton.caetano.souza@copin.ufcg.edu.br 6

7. What are we aiming?
cleyton.caetano.souza@copin.ufcg.edu.br 7

8. Evaluation
• We asked 250 volunteers to evaluate the
functional aspects of our project.
– Who are they?
Facebook users, members of several groups related with
Education, TV, Sports, and Technology.
cleyton.caetano.souza@copin.ufcg.edu.br 8

9. Results
cleyton.caetano.souza@copin.ufcg.edu.br 9

10. Results
cleyton.caetano.souza@copin.ufcg.edu.br 10

11. Future Work
• Currently
– Carefully literature review
– The rephrase module
• Next Steps
– Make the first version prototype available
– Develop the second version prototype
cleyton.caetano.souza@copin.ufcg.edu.br 11

12. Thank You
Enhancing the Status Message Question
Asking Process on Facebook
Cleyton Souza
Questions?
cleyton.caetano.souza@copin.ufcg.edu.br 12