For those who missed it Facebook and its fearless Leader CEO Mark Zuckerberg had a giant game changing announcement today during which they were set to reveal a game changing new product. Rumors flew left and right about what this new product could be with a rather large majority of folks feeling that it was going to be a Facebook phone which many have felt has been a long time coming. Leading up to the event however Zuckerberg made several comments in which he made it pretty clear that a Facebook phone was not the answer. As of today at 10:30am PST however we know exactly what it was that Zuckerberg and Facebook was keeping hush hush – a search engine!
The official name of the product is Graph Search (think open graph – the system that Facebook uses internally to link information provided by users). Graph Search is still in its beta form but promises to be a rather interesting quandary. On the face (pun intended) side of things it will all a user to perform a rather intuitive search of all those with whom one is Friends within the social network. One example might be if I were to search for “all friends who live in Seattle.” Graph Search would then shoot back results with the relevant info on all my Friends who have listed Seattle as their home.
Interestingly the search can be even more in-depth. Say I was to search for “friends who like Dr. Who and who live in Alabama.” Graph Search would easily pull this info up based on the information that my Friends have chosen to make public. Rather than depending on searching links however Graph Search will look at Likes across the internet. When you go to a site, see something that catches your eye (like the new Corvette Stingray!), and then like it, one of your Friends will then be able to see that info if they were to search for “friends that like Corvette” or “friends that like new Stingray.”
According to Facebook, this is their attempt at getting back to where they started by helping people to make more connections. This however raises an important question – how many of your Friends are you really trying to find out more about? Do you REALLY feel that you might have to search to know who all lives in a certain area or that likes a certain movie? This type of information smacks of something much deeper – questionable social media marketing tactics. Marketers and business people could potentially access such information for those who have Liked their fan page thereby giving them access to information that could make it easier to know how to market to their target audience.
While Facebook may have rolled out a shiny, new search engine that promises to help strengthen connections and to make new ones, it does appear that they have done so to help give businesses on the social network a stronger foothold to be able to target potential clients or customers. Is this the case? Only time and the potential fallout that might include more and more individuals making their Likes and info private will tell. For now though it certainly seems that Facebook has taken another step away from the friendly place to make connections toward a much more commercialized setup for better or worse.