The graph is developed with the ability to answer to very detailed questions regarding:
– your friends
– you personal data
as well as a whole range of other available free data and information floating around on the Facebook site; which I might add is enormous. Just think about all those exciting bits of information that is currently online throughout the Facebook platform.
For example you can search for: ‘ football teams my friends like’ and it will give you a list of all the teams your friends or family have been following throughout the year or a list of clubs or football associations that are are affiliated with or belong to, which are aligned with Facebook.
This might completely turn the whole search industry on its head.
Look at the progression over lets say the past 15 years. To begin with, people used the old yellow pages to search for businesses or services. This was great and helped many businesses grow and this was largely in part to the size of their ad as well as their advertising budget; the more you spent, the more ads you could have etc etc. The next phase was Google. People invested in large sums of money in what is termed search engine optimisation or SEO to get their website to the first page of Google for a variety of keywords and or phrases. And finally, we are at the next stage of Facebooks graph where users can search for lets say an ‘accountant in Sydney’ that their friends are using and get a whole list of accountants based on their experience and rating. No longer will you be given results based on what Google deems to be the best but now it will be based on what your Facebook friends have liked.
Businesses, companies and organisations worldwide could possible even search within their followers and target these followers based on their certain interest and likes.
This really is going to put a cat amongst the pigeons in the search world. People love Facebook and if businesses are able to capitalise on this Facebook graph search by incorporating tit into their marketing mix then this could have huge ramifications for the other major search engines.
Businesses are looking for an alternative to what Google can offer and perhaps another avenue by which to get their name out there and be found. If Facebook Graph can refine their process just a bit more to make it resonate with the business community then there may be some hope for it. But remember, Google is the mammoth search engine giant and changing users search patterns may not be as easy as it looks or seems. The public are just so used to relying on Google, that dislodging their prior search habits for the past 10 years may be too hard a task. If you look at Facebook trying to get into the pay per click market similar to Google, you will see the absolute failure of this. Businesses have not warmed to this and in turn Google has continued to dominate the paid search market hands down.
I guess only time will tell and we shall see the fate to the Facebook Graph unfold over the next couple of months. So watch this space carefully.