Photo: Facebook Search = Social News Search
Today I finally got to play with the new search capabilities in Facebook (it is a phased roll-out).
I found it fascinating that the very first question in the official FAQ positions the tool foremost as a news discovery engine. I think that with a few additions like geotagging, alerts and better content discovery tools (e.g. show me trends from my friends' friends), they're moving toward potentiality something huge. The Friendfeed team I am sure will help them.
A question to ponder: what does this mean for journalism and PR? A lot. As Facebook Search grows and, yes, learns, it will become a lot more powerful. Over time, it could change our habits and accelerate what many of us are doing now - becoming source agnostic. Lots to consider here.
This, folks, is a very very big deal. And it's just the beginning. If you think about the number of sites that use Facebook Connect and ponder whether the crawl could span to those satellites as well, suddenly you can see a new era for search emerging. Google should be scared. Facebook may have a leg in here - if they can keep their community growing.
Comments 7 Comments
In Google's defence/corner is the approaching Google Wave - this is a very exciting technology in terms of instant collaboration and information dissemination for groups of friends and work colleagues.
The underlying rich social interaction information Facebook has to mine semantically is a big boon for them along with the integration of Friendfeed in whatever form it takes.
Facebook still has a ways to go in terms of usability as the interface IMHO is still too cluttered/too busy for rich interactions to take place in a seamless way.
Bring on the future...
All the best,
Tom