Facebook Search: How Disruptive?
January 16, 2013
Lots of punditry today. Facebook rolled out graph search. A registered user can run queries answered by content within the Facebook “database.” How will it work? Public content becomes the corpus. Navigate to the BBC write up “Facebook Unveils Social Search Tools for Users.”
A comment by Facebook’s founder which caught my attention was:
“We look at Facebook as a big social database,” said Mr Zuckerberg, adding that social search was Facebook’s “third pillar” and stood beside the news feed and timeline as the foundational elements of the social network.
The former Googler allegedly responsible for Facebook’s search allegedly observed:
On graph search, you can only see content that people have shared with you,” developer Lars Rasmussen, who was previously the co-founder of Google Maps, told reporters.
So no reprise of the various privacy missteps the GOOG made. Facebook wants to avoid some of its fast dancing over privacy too.
How disruptive will Facebook search be?
First, the Facebook users will give search a whirl. The initial queries will be tire kicking stuff. Once some patterns emerge, the Facebook bean counters will slip the switch on ads. That, not search, may cause Google some moments of concern. Google, like Microsoft, has to protect its one trick revenue pony. Facebook won’t stampede the cattle, but those doggies will wander. If the pasture is juicy, Facebook will let those cows roam. Green pastures can be fragile ecosystems.
Second, search sucks. Facebook could answer certain types of questions better than the brute force Web indexing services. If users discover the useful functions of Facebook, traffic for the weak sisters like Blekko and Yahoo could head south. The Google won’t be hurt right away, but the potential for Facebook to index only urls cited by registered users could be a more threatening step. Surgical search, not brute force, may slice some revenues from the Google.
Third, Facebook could learn, as Google did, that search is a darned good thing. Armed with the social info and the Facebook users’ curated urls, Facebook could cook up a next generation search solution that could snow on Googzilla’s parade. Google Plus is interesting but Facebook may be just the outfit to pop search up a level. Google is not an innovator, so Facebook may be triggering a new search arms race.
Thank goodness.
Stephen E Arnold, January 16, 2013
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