Facebook announces social graph search

[Heath]

http://www.examiner.com/article/face...acebookchanges

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today a new way of connecting with others on the social network. He called Facebook a ?living database? and that users should be able to ?query it.?

He outlined the three pillars of queries that occur on Facebook. First is the newsfeed that tells users ?what?s going on with the people around them?? The second query is the timeline that tells users ?who is this person?? The third pillar he introduced today?Graph Search. It started in beta today and will be rolled out to all users slowly.

How is this query different than the first two user options? It allows users to build queries that they want. How is this different from an web search? It is not like a traditional web page that Google indexes for its search engine. Instead, Facebook indexed their database?1 billion people, 240 billion photos, and 1 trillion connections?all at user fingertips. ?They are friend connections, follow connections, photo tags, likes, and comments.?

Now, a good question is how is privacy protected or is it still? Yes, it is privacy-aware which, according to Zuckerberg?s presentation means:

• Every piece of content has its own audience
• Most content is not public
• You can only search for content that has been shared with you

So, what are the uses of such a search? Let?s say you want to collect information on all your friends who enjoy the TV show Game of Thrones. You can do a precise search on that and see who you might invite over to watch the season premier with you. Or if you want to know what friends like Star Wars AND Harry Potter you simply run a query. And, in the event you can't find what you've searched for, they have partnered with Bing so you can look on their search engine.

Of course this all sounds good, but what will it mean for always fluctuating privacy settings? How about the barrage of advertising? Will we see an influx of friends based on what we put in our political and religious views? There are a lot of questions that come along with this new feature.

[Verbal]

Very interesting indeed.

[DamianJ]

Originally Posted by Verbal

Very interesting indeed.

Why? What do you find interesting about it?

[BIGTYMER]

Lame. They interrupt the news for this??!

[James_Hotmovies]

some thoughts:

Not sure how it will affect adult due to the lack of public liking of adult items.

Yelp, Angie's list and similar sites have a new enemy. Although facebook is already all our enemies. it takes eyeballs away from porn.

privacy is going to be an issue. making it easier to dig through people's likes might backfire to people liking less objects.

facebook started doing email a while back and nobody cared, this could be the same thing.

[Verbal]

Originally Posted by DamianJ

Why? What do you find interesting about it?

Although I don't think this will affect adult much, I do think this might turn out to be a realistic shot at putting a dent in Google's dominance. If you run a mainstream business and are not already doing all you can on the social media front, then you will soon be left behind.

[Heath]

Facebook loses 1.4 million active users in U.S.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/fac...?Link=obinsite

Maybe people got tired of their friends and family over the holidays, or perhaps they resolved to do a digital detox for the New Year. Either way, Facebook has been a bit quieter lately.

The number of Americans using Facebook fell by nearly 1.4 million in early December, according to new data from social media monitoring company SocialBakers. While Facebook FB -0.17% has more than 167 million users in the U.S. and 1 billion worldwide, the recent drop in monthly active users is still akin to losing the entire population of San Antonio, Texas. “Facebook is possibly getting to a point where the less engaged part of the audience doesn’t visit every 30 days,” says SocialBakers CEO Jan Rezab.

Why the fall off? The increased advertising on the site and new experimental fees may be grating on some users’ nerves, experts say. Earlier this month, for example, Facebook tested charging users (with fees peaking at $100 within the U.S.) to send a message to someone outside their “friends” list. And in October, it rolled out the option to promote posts to more friends for a $7 fee. “There seems to be a change every other week,” says K. Jason Krafsky, who co-wrote the book “Facebook and Your Marriage.”

[wehateporn]

[EddyTheDog]

Good for mainstream, boring for us.

Yelp dropped 6% on the news.

[vdbucks]

the facebook mega machine is in full motion...

why worry about spying on people when they so willingly share it all anyway.

The best tool government agencies ever created.

[Black All Through]

I'm gonna go in the corner and jerk off now

[wehateporn]

Originally Posted by vdbucks

the facebook mega machine is in full motion...

why worry about spying on people when they so willingly share it all anyway.

The best tool government agencies ever created.

Good point vdbucks

[PornMD]

Yea, no sorry that's going to be pointless.

[seeandsee]

can i search for biggest tits among friends?

[slapass]

I use FB all the time. Their search is crap. If you are trying to find someone and you have their name it only works about half the time. I need to go to google and do the query and that brings me back to facebook. I serisouly doubt anyone needs to fear this new stuff.

[Kolargol]