Facebook and Semantic Search
October 27, 2011
Stories about Facebook search surface then disappear. For years we have wondered why Twitter resists indexing the urls posted by Facebook members. Our view is that for the Facebook crowd, this curated subset of Web pages would be a useful reference resource. With Facebook metadata, the collection could become quite interesting in a number of dimensions.
Not yet, but the ongoing social media war between Web giants Facebook and Google doesn’t seem to be stopping at social media.
Facebook was last spring beavering away to create a semantic search engine using meta data, based on the company’s Open Graph system and by using collected data on every user. Few companies have the ability to build a semantic search engine, but with Facebook’s scale of users (over 400 million users), the company has the ability to create something huge. We learn more on AllFacebook’s article, “Facebook Seeks To Build the Semantic Search Engine”:
There are a number of standards that have been created in the past as some developers have pointed out, microformats being the most widely accepted version, however the reduction of friction for implementation means that Facebook has a better shot at more quickly collecting the data. The race is on for building the semantic web and now that developers and website owners have the tools to implement this immediately.
The source document appeared in April 2011 and here we are in the run up to Turkey Day and no semantic search system. Now we are wondering if Facebook has concluded that search is yesterday’s business or is the company struggling with implementation of semantic technology in a social space?
We will keep watching.
Andrea Hayden, October 27, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
