Formspring - Ask me a question!

I had never heard of "Formspring" before Dan Americh started talking about it on Twitter and his podcast. Basically, it's a place where you can ask anybody anything. You won't necessarily get an answer, but you never know.

Just as an example, here's Dan's Formspring page. I think he'll answer pretty much anything, though obviously not the extremely personal stuff.

I looked around the site, and it's kind of intriguing. Not for the extremely private people who don't want *anything* about themselves to get out there, but if you don't mind publicizing yourself a little bit, it's great. Anyway, I thought I would give it a try.

Basically, all you do is sign up for an account (you can log in via Facebook and Twitter, too). Once you've completed your profile, they spring three easy questions on you. I don't know if it's the same three for everybody or not, but mine were:

"What do you think about formspring.me so far?"
"If you could be on the cover of any magazine, which would you choose?"
"When was the last time you received flowers?"

It's that easy! I think you don't need an account to ask people questions, though users can set it so somebody has to be logged in to ask them a question. Others may have theirs set up so *anybody* can do it. Even logged in, you can ask the question anonymously if you wish.

Formspring is just another way for people to engage with others online. How successful will it be? I don't know, but it is an interesting concept. The amount of participation you give it is completely up to you. You can say "I'm not going to answer that" or you can ignore a question, or you can give an honest answer. It's actually pretty cool.

Here's my new Formspring page, if you're interested in asking me anything. I'm kind of private, so I won't necessarily answer anything. But if it's something I would blog about, I'll be happy to answer things there. I did answer those three questions.

Hit me up!

Edit #1 (6/22/10): A few people have found this blog by searching for something like "different ways to say 'ask me a question'". You can do that just by going into your profile settings. It's right there, about 2/3 of the way down.