Facebook to Compete in Web Search?

[Brad]

It appears Zuckerberg wants to start trying.

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-search-engine-2012-9?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Falleyinsider%2Fsilicon_alley_insider+%28Silicon+Alley+Insider%29T

"Zuckerberg said that Facebook has one billion queries on a daily basis and it's basically doing that without trying."

[BoL]

They certainly have a huge amount of data to build something new, and maybe even exciting.

[bill]

Wouldn't it be more efficient for them to get someone like Bing in there to do it for them? SEs are not easy things to build from scratch.

[littleman]

That would be the easy thing to do, and probably make the most financial scene, but they should be able to do some pretty interesting things with all that data they have like make the ultimate search bubble we're all terrified of.

[Chunkford]

Search Bubble who?

[Brad]

Sounds like he wants to produce an answers search engine based on social data instead of links (ie. "What beers do my friends like most?").  I suppose they could outsource the building of that engine, however that would be helping somebody else build the SE instead of building it yourself.  I don't think you would be in control of the intellectual property at the end of it.

I'm not sure Bing "gets it" they may be too locked into the link based SE way of thinking, although they would make decent backfill.

Google, I'm sure does not get it. They don't seem to really understand social media, plus I would not trust them anywhere near my IP or even as backfill and seeing my users search queries.

[TallTroll]

Let me fix that for you, Brad

>>  They don't seem to really understand social

Fixed. I was talking to a mate (ex-Yahoo SW eng, mapping team), and he commented that G+ feels like what a geek would build to get friends. I tend to agree with him

[Brad]

Right, Google is out of it then.

I might be stuck too much in the past too because I'm having a hard time imagining myself using a Facebook search engine, but I would like to see it and try it.  When you combine the Likes, Shares, pages with the geographical check in data (maybe bolstered by more data from foresquare) such an engine could be really useful for travel, dining, entertainment, even high street shopping.

Blekko would also make good backfill. Maybe not as good as bing but it would do.

[IrishWonder]

Meh IMHO search and social just shouldn't mix. If I want to ask people I know about something I don't need a search engine for that - I will ask them elsewhere, maybe even offline. If I need to search for something it may be either because people I know cannot provide me with any info or because I don't want them to know I am even interested in searching for something. That's my main beef with "social" search on Google and Bing

Search in Facebook's implementation might be a complete win for them, depending on the actual implementation, at least because 100% of their users are logged in and they, unlike Google, don't have to invent ways to identify them, so they get a ton more data, and it's all connected and can be analysed in whichever way you want - including but not limited to users' connection to each other, interactions between them. I am pretty sure there will be a lot of companies wishing to get their hands on all that data, to identify the influencers, get to market to influencers directly, increase the impact of their marketing efforts, that kind of stuff, and I can see a million ways Facebook could milk the situation for a long time. But people just don't go to Facebook to search - they go thee for other purposes, and I don't know what it would take Facebook to persuade their users otherwise. But we'll live and see.

[Gurtie]

a facebook shopping search would be interesting. I can see a series of vertical search engines for things you might want to ask friends opinion on being used a fair bit - sort of extends the social thing to another dimension - "would this dress suit me" "which of these sofa's is better" "should I get Gurtie this fo Christmas?".   I'm not sure that they can get people to swap to facebook search for everything though.

Although given the amount of people who do something just because you tell them to on FB, they probably can. Or they could award points and status updates - SearchVille?

[nffc]

I think a facebook search could be killer if they had the brains to create one, I very much doubt they have. Maybe, just maybe, they could use say Bing and tweak it.

[Brad]

I like Gurties idea of developing a game to introduce people to the new search.

[Gurtie]

dear god, no!

[TallTroll]

Semi-ninja'd

http://www.kongregate.com/pages/google-a-day