<div>Ever since its controversial IPO, everyone has been waiting for Facebook to get a strong mobile strategy together. When an announcement was to happen on 16 January, there were hopes that this would be it.</div><div> </div> <div>Instead, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, announced a “Graph Search”. Graph Search is not as mathematical as it sounds, though the algorithms needed to make it work certainly will be. Graph Search basically is supposed to put together the information you already put out on Facebook and make it relevant to specific questions you might have. For example, I could look for friends who love photography. Or friends living in Delhi who eat pasta at restaurants. Or even friends of friends who like classical music. </div> <div> </div> <div>Before you go up in arms about whether this violates your privacy, Facebook already thought of that, specially given its iffy history with users’ privacy. Your Facebook privacy settings are taken into consideration by the new Graph Search and nothing that has been made completely private will show up in searches publically. This does mean though that you have to pay attention to your privacy settings — not necessarily a bad thing.</div> <div> </div> <div>Graph Search is strictly in beta and not even outside of the US yet. You can ask to be notified when it’s available and rolled out to you, but for not there’s nothing you can do but try a small demo search. Facebook plans to watch how Graph Search is used before letting it loose in the wild.</div> <div> </div> <div>One of the first things that comes to mind is whether this impacts Google adversely. Well, not so far. In fact, it’s Google’s stock that went up. Facebook’s search is not the same thing as a Web search and that’s a point that was clarified. Web search is raw, a big volume of results with the more relevant ones up front. </div> <div> </div> <div>Facebook’s Graph Search is very specific to your network and network’s networks. And it’s highly contextual. You should be able, for example, to search for engineers who like biking — but not all engineers in the world; just those relevant to you. One can’t yet try out the efficacy of this search as it isn’t open, but the idea is certainly interesting and one even wonders why it wasn’t done before, given the data Facebook has on each of us.</div> <div> </div> <div>Another issue is that of whether this new search will help Facebook sell space to advertisers looking to get a really finely targeted (and hence narrower) audience. After all, this audience would be more likely to act on advertisements relevant to them. But it’s too early to say as Facebook seems wary of thinking of Social Graph in revenue terms yet. It’s “only the beginning” so we know that the plan will unfold in good time, but there are no direct revenue implications immediately.</div> <div> </div> <div>mala(at)pobox(dot)com, (at)malabhargava on Twitter </div>
BW Reporters
Mala Bhargava has been writing on technology well before the advent of internet in Indians and before CDs made their way into computers. Mala writes on technology, social media, startups and fitness. A trained psychologist, she claims that her understanding of psychology helps her understand the human side of technology.
