Facebook Search Engine?
Yep! You read that just fine. Facebook, social networking giant (and future competitor of Decoding), just released a search engine (perhaps to gain some edge over us). But their search engine isn’t like Google. Their search engine, called “Facebook Graph Search“, invokes results based on your database of friends, likes and activities. I’ll break it down for you, so that you can understand Facebook Graph just as well as I do.
For starters, the name is pretty apt, considering that the search engine functions on
the graph that Facebook makes, joining all the dots made by your friends, likes and activities. Think of it as a web that connects all of these so as to make this massive, complex matrix, consisting of common friends, likes, activities and so on (read more about the social graph here). This search engine takes in queries such as ‘Movies that my friends like’, thereby displaying the movies that your friends have either been to or actually liked on Facebook. To understand Facebook Graph Search better (and to register for beta testing), click here to go the official site.
The members over at Facebook have explained the search feature being different from Google like so: on Google, searching for the keyword “Apple” would display results on either the company or the fruit. On Facebook, searching for the keyword will display different results for different users, catered to each user, so as to display just what the user might be interested in and has in common with others. Personally, I don’t see Facebook Graph Search as being a threat to Google, especially with Google Search incorporated right into the Google Chrome Omnibox (the box in which you type the address of the webpage that you want to visit, otherwise called the “Address Bar” on other browsers).
All the same, Facebook Graph is a very interesting idea, and the best part is that it is privacy aware. This means that Facebook Graph will not accidentally pull up results that you probably didn’t want to share, such as the bars you like, in case your parents key that into Facebook Graph. This explains Facebook’s sudden interest in making the privacy settings much more visible and easier to use. Facebook Graph also takes in search queries such as ‘Books that doctors like’ or ‘Pubs that engineers go to’, and if Facebook doesn’t have the answer, then Facebook Graph has incorporated Bing Search, so that users always get results.
Had Facebook incorporated Google Search into Facebook Graph Search, then I’d be sold, but it seems as though Facebook is planning on going head on with Google. This seems like an interesting approach, and the battle should be fun, with each engine getting better to beat the other. Facebook will never fall with the social network as it’s backbone, but then again, Google has Android and Chrome. Only time will tell how these events will pan out. In the meantime, continue reading our posts (and commenting, leaving your thoughts on the same) to keep yourself updated on the latest in technology. If you like posts like this, please visit http://d3tech3d.wordpress.com/ to see a list of posts by the same author. In the meantime, keep the comments rolling and remember – the cake is a lie!
About the Author
Fluffy Fluffy is actually a purple elephant that loves technology! This should be no surprise, since a purple elephant is doomed to have no friends. But having lived in the forest for so long, he was exposed to none... Now that he finally has a computer - he can't get enough! Follow Fluffy on his blog to learn about tech alongside him!
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