Facebook’s search engine has always been a bit lacking – results would come up very fast, from the first letters you would type, I’ll grant them that much, but often times they had nothing to do with what you were actually searching for. But now, after 8 years, 1 billion registered users and with all the different tools and apps incorporated, Facebook finally has everything it needs and all the necessary data to offer an impressive search engine – and it’s called graph search.
It’s still early, I have to admit, as the tool has only just been announced on 15 January 2013, but I think I’ve seen and read enough to get the general gist of it. And I have to say it’s got me pretty excited about Facebook again. When you first hear the news you might ask yourself, what’s so special about a search engine in this day and age? But you can see for yourself – it’s pretty impressive. And lots of fun! The guys at Mashable believe that it could even be “Facebook’s greatest innovation”!
So how does it work – and, most of all, what’s so special about it?
As I’ve mentioned earlier, in the 8 years since Facebook’s launch it gathered 1 billion registered users – and that means a lot of data. A lot! And now, with graph search you can look for absolutely anything regarding that data. You can ask any question and cross-reference it any way imaginable.
Let’s take a look at Facebook’s example of how graph search can be used. They start with a simple search: “Find friends who work at my company.” But that might not be enough for you, and you want to narrow it down – so Facebook lets you add “who like to ski”, for example.
If you want to go out for a meal and don’t know where, than you can take your friends’ recommendations and search for “Restaurants in London my friends have been to” and you will see a list of all those restaurants.
You can do the same with music, people, photos and whatever else you can think of. It really doesn’t get more specific than this. Not yet, anyway. And now that I think of it, it is actually quite scary the way you could find absolutely anyone on Facebook, even if you have no idea what his or her name is. Let’s say you saw a girl you liked at a concert last night, but didn’t get to ask her for her name. No problem, so long as she is on Facebook and the information you need is public, then you can probably find her. Just search “girl under 30 from London that likes Black Keys” and roam through the results and she’ll probably be one of them.
I’m sure this will cause plenty of privacy issues among Facebook users, even if graph search won’t show details you haven’t made public. However, there’s always something that you might have missed and forgot to set on private. We don’t even know if it has the power to search through posts and status updates. It probably will, even if later on. Graph search really has the potential to be an indispensable tool for stalkers and people will probably revolt against it. But I think it will make Facebook a lot better, and a lot more fun. It really opens up a world of possibilities for regular people and for businesses.
First impressions
As I said earlier, I believe there is a great chance that many people will revolt against the new feature, considering the privacy issues it entails. But for now, the overall feel is positive – most bloggers, critics and news websites are very excited about the new tool, and most point out that a new search engine was long overdue. However, we all got more than we expected. Graph search is so much more than a simple search engine – it’s a lot more of a discovery tool.
Of course, the announcement was followed by some interesting fluctuations in stock prices, and not just for Facebook. Facebook’s stock was down by over 2% after the announcement, most probably because the investors were hoping to get more than just a search engine – they wanted the Facebook phone.
However, the one that was really hit by Facebook’s announcement was Yelp, a company that could be really hurt by graph search. Yelp makes its money from recommending businesses to people, so Facebook’s new tool poses a direct threat to it, which lead to an 8% drop in stock shares to as low as $20.16 a share. After all, if people can get business recommendations directly from their friends, who they trust, why would they go read other people’s opinions?
Graph Search for businesses
Graph search has an amazing potential for businesses. Firstly, it will help businesses in the same way Yelp does (no wonder their stock prices dropped so much after the announcement!). People will now be able to search for their friends’ preferences and see what restaurants they like in different cities, for example.
If you want your business to appear in as many search results as possible, then make sure you complete your profile and put in as much information as possible (without overdoing it, of course, and making sure it is relevant). You should also make sure you put in lots of photos and tag all of them – add locations, time and your business. Many Facebook users will probably use the new tool to find pictures, so help them find yours and discover your business.
It’s also very important that you make sure that all the data on your businesses’ page is public. Unless it is, you can’t expect people to find you.
That’s it for now, we’ll have to wait and see some more before we can explore all the different implications that graph search has for businesses.
Overall, I’m really excited and can’t wait to see what I’ll be able to do with graph search. Are you excited about the announcement? Do the privacy issues scare you? And how do you think it will affect businesses? I can’t wait to hear your opinions – so please leave a comment.
Lilach
Founder at Socialable Ltd
Lilach Bullock is passionate about getting tangible results using social media. Listed in Forbes as one of the top 20 women social media power influencers. She's the co-author of "Images that Influence" (Number One in its category on Amazon). Lilach is consulted by journalists and regularly quoted in newspapers on social media related matters, including (Forbes, Social Media Today, Prima Magazine, The Sunday Times and BBC Radio 5 Live ). A keynote speaker at business and marketing seminars.
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6 Responses to What Facebook Open Graph means for your business
Pingback: What Facebook Open Graph means for your business
People these days worry so much about their privacy on Facebook. I don’t and the reason why is because I am in business for myself and I want to be found in searches, etc… I don’t post anything on Facebook that I don’t want certain people to read. It’s that simple.
Twitter: MyPetProtector
Lilach,
Can not wait to start playing with the new search features. They have not approved my account for the beta yet.
Andy
Andy Nathan recently posted..Steps to Effectively Budget Your Social Media Campaign
Twitter: andynathan
This new graph search feature will really help to build connections more effectively.Narrowing down of searches till the finest detail is something which is quite new to the search world.Really hope this feature continues to rebuild itself and keeps giving us profound surprises.
Joe Hart recently posted..Dental Implants
I can’t say that I’m much scared of any privacy issues or changes, but I think that we will see the results of such changes only in some time
Julia Spencer’s recent post.. Effective Tips for Sharing Content on Facebook
Thanks for this Lilach, very useful pointers. I think the photo tagging bit will be important especially for travel industry companies.
Twitter: no1influencer