Truly searching your Social Graph….Facebook is introducing Facebook-Sociogram so search in social profiles and connect with peers and commons. Will this be the next big step for Facebook in the take-over of the “e”-universe?
With the introduction of searching the social graph (or sociogram), not only for people, but for all search items possible, Facebook steps into a new market segment….or not?! With the introduction of Facebook Graph Search you can search for people who share similar ideas, have the same hobbies, live in the same place, travel the same places, …. This means Facebook still remains close to its bottom line: connecting people. Thanks to the social graph search you will find people with similarities inside your profile (your peers) but also outside your social graph (your commons). Next video shows us how this works.
But with this action Facebook steps into a new market for them: “search”….”Social Search” to be more specific, but with a different angle than Google (or others) claim “Social Search”. With this new step Facebook can become a new player in becoming the nr. ?? in search. YouTube being the second biggest search engine after Google, shows us (and Facebook) how people think of search in 2012/3.
Will we be searching first in our social graph first, instead of Google? That’s the one million dollar question….but 2 things are clear. Searching the social graph gives Facebook the power to gather even more personal interests and knowledge, which makes personal ads (cfr. Google) even more personal. But besides the personalization it gives Facebook the power to re-connect people with similar interest, giving them again an advantage…(since few people are stepping into the complete Google+ story)!
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Amazing…..
or maybe just too much????
All in all very fascinating.
… and in my opinion also scarrying at the same time
I doubt that people are ready for this… Maybe the technology, but most certainly not the people. This is too personal (or too social?) and I would rather delete any interests from my FB profile than popping up in some foreign person`s search engine… scary…
Why does Facebook come up with new innovations/functionalities all the time? One could say “Facebook tries to ensure its market position”, others suppose that Facebook wants to make money out of this information linking Sociogram. Well ok.
But it always depends on the user’s decision to use the functionality respectively to share the information needed to provide this service.
If nobody would use it, Facebook would abolish it. That’s what most people lack when talking about Facebook or Google being data-grabbing monsters!
I would say this is a highly interesting topic. Not only to connect people with similar interests… it should also be seen as a business opportunity. As we all know word-of-mouth is probably the most effective way to promote things… Think of: whom do you rely more your friends or the advertisment on TV? Thinking of business opportunity – company’s around the world already started to connect their websites with Facebook profiles to collect peoples interests and personalize their content accordingly… Thus there are also companies where you can buy presents for your facebook friends. Based on your friend’s page likes or posts the company will suggest you gifts for your friend’s birthday…
Facebook did also introduce “Facebook gifts” last year – although the rollout has not been completed. By using Facebook gifts you can send your friend a real present, e.g. on the day of birth. He/she will immediately receive a message including your birthday card and a picture of the present which will be delivered within few days.
Thus it does sound promising, critical questions remain:
Will people be willing to use such services? Will they be even more scared about Facebook and leave due to the feeling of lacking security? Would they even accept to send Facebook the credit card details? etc.
With the sociogram Facebook in my opinion strenghten his brand core: to connect people. About the million dollar question: I think search attutitude of Google and Facebook has different background. For me the battle is not really the point.
For people having an interest in something special, something which is not common (in the area,) this function might come in handy to find like minded people as the reach of fb is increadibly high. Also it might be a big opportunity for companies to customize their offers / advertisments. Giving the customer a feeling of being unique and serving their individual demands will be the way to go in future.
The sad thing about it though is that it limitates ideas….e.g. I think the best “creative brainstorming” sessions can be done with a mixture of people from completely diverse backgrounds, with different point of views and a different scope of experience and expertise – if only the same “kind of people” stick together all the time, exchange ideas and communicate there won’t be any truely new approaches and ideas anymore 😦
However the fact that this can be done of course ist amazing and scary at the same time (towards Helga and Petra above). On the other hand you can’t blame the technology or the platform which offers it – as Sebastian mentioned above – if no one used it Facebook wouldn’t offer it any further. The crux is the awareness of the people about their own usage. Do most people realize which data they are publishing and the consequences this can have? I think they don’t and we are not sensitive enough with our online behaviour.
It’s the logical next step for facebook to build a strong search engine and the idea behind it is quite good. To search for people not by name but by interests holds a high amount of opportunities. You can schedule somethig with people you know they like it, e.g. a trip to the Alps for snowboarding.
But on the other hand earns facebook money with advertising and they make even bigger money with cusomized and personal advertising. So the new search might be just a way for facebook to get more personal information and a new possibility to place advertising.
This search only works when you put more and more personal information online. If you don’t you might miss out, you might won’t get the chance to find interesting people, maybe your friends won’t consider you in their weekendplans because your profile doesn’t say you like that.
In my personal opinion this search is just a way to place more advertising on you and force you to give more details about your life to facebook. So I probably won’t use it too much.
I’m still waiting for Facebook becoming Skynet 🙂 (–> Terminator 2)
The search engine of Facebook has a lot of possibilities to improve in my opinion. This ‘Sociogram’ is a big step forward towards that improvement. People always search for the links they have with other people. On the other hand I don’t think it will be a threat for Google at short notice because Facebook has a more ‘social’ idea than Google. The ‘Sociogram’ sure has potential, and Facebook has the power to make it big.