Welcome, Facebook Graph.
It’s the big announcement Facebook presented yesterday and it just might revolutionize Search. What it does, is search your Facebook Friends for answers to your questions. It brings up that they “liked” that barbecue restaurant, or that the DMV on Cherry street has the longest wait of any DMV ever. You are basically searching for answers in every post/share/like/photo/tag on every one of your friends profile page, at the same time. These are the people you have decided to trust with viewing your profile and now you are able to “poll” them for the answers you seek.
The applications of this are immense. You could find out what friends of friends are hiring. Who is interested in hockey? Who is writing political statements? Who liked the area you are moving to? Who lives in the area you are moving to? Personal interaction will be increased massively but what about professional?
With Graph, you could find out who is looking for a new iPad and send them a sales ad. Who is looking to partner with an E-Waste recycling company? Who has particular skill sets? The list can go on and on. It’s going to be a staple for businesses and their marketing schemes. You could potentially advertise to anyone your friends are friends with.
Naturally, this search feature is raising more Privacy concerns for the already skeptical user. Facebook Graph was designed with privacy in mind, so here is what I would do: Find one day out of this month and set aside 6 hours to slowly and carefully enhance your Facebook privacy settings. If you don’t, people will be able to see that picture of you doing a beer bong when they search for ‘local pubs.’
One company to think about is Google. They aren’t saying much now but in the future they may need to be on their guard. Facebook Graph is partnered with Microsoft Bing for searches that don’t come up in your social network. So if your friends don’t have anything to say about it, at least you can look it up through your profile page.
Google is prominent for ‘Web Searches’ so there isn’t much to worry about right now. But with the rise of Social networks and the importance they are exuding, these organic network searches could become an issue as more people start trusting their friends over the web.
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