When the CEO of any company uses ALL CAPS in a subject line – it’s usually a good idea to pay attention. There is no shortage of opinions and reactions to the news from online marketers around the world. But while some people took a couple of hours to formulate their thoughts, our team followed and reacted to the information as it was released. The result, a cynical, humorous and intelligent conversation about the future of what we do as Facebook leads the way.
Tony: Probably a good idea to pay attention to this one. It will affect us.
Joe: Danny Sullivan / Marketing Land live-blog: https://marketingland.com/live-blog-facebook-30791 /
Facebook live stream: https://www.livestream.com/facebookevents
Minh: Just skimmed through Danny’s updates. Sounds pretty impressive.
If you think about it, Graph Search seems like such an intuitive feature to have. Why is Facebook just now getting to this point?
Tim: Captain Obvious question: Uh, how has Facebook not had this until now? This is a question Facebook addicts can’t imagine asking, right? Facebook rulz!
Courtney: Too busy with lawsuits 😛
Minh: I think they’ve always meant to have it. Just developing it, I’d imagine is a feat in itself.
Tim: Should have just installed a Google search plug-in <rimshot>?
>Most misleading headline in the history of the world, “Facebook Takes on Google with Graph Search” https://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57564077-93/facebook-takes-on-google-with-graph-search/
At this moment, Danny was covering how users can drill down into their friends information and search for information. He also mentions how user’s privacy settings are kept intact.
Kevin: Needs a ‘last updated’ metric displayed or ‘most recent comment’
Sarah: Even if it is confined just to your group of friends – it’s still one hell of a machine. The refinements alone are wonderful. But, I wonder how privacy settings will play into this setup.
Tim: Early on they said it respects all privacy settings, so you can only see what a user would normally allow you to see.
Sarah: I just saw the bit about recruiting – so this doesn’t really help my creepy skills. I’m now disappointed.
Kevin: They’ll probably follow Google’s and have a Privacy Settings: “Not Provided”.
Seriously, though, anything that helps game the system or for groups/profiles having the Private checked I assume would stop it from appearing in the FBRPS.
We know now that the shiny Graph Search is the lovechild between Facebook and Bing. They’ve apparently spent a lot of time in bed with each other to create such a robust engine.
Clint: Isn’t Facebook in bed with Bing? I’m interested in how this might affect Bing search.
Tony: I think a lot of “lay” people will be surprised at what is public and what is not. But if it’s good enough and useful enough, privacy won’t matter. We’ve all seen that before. We’ll give up privacy for a really cool toy.
>Good call Clint – Danny just posted that Bing is going to be more integrated into Facebook search.
Jenneva: I think that since they are in bed together they are trying to both take the giant down. The more help the better – I think Bing thinks. But did you see that Google (market) shares went up with the announcement and FB went down.
So just how big will this ripple effect be and what other programs will it include? Personally, spell check would be a welcome addition.
Tim: Oooo, maybe FB will integrate MS Word spell check, too!
Kevin: Microsoft has been determined to integrate Skype into everything. I wonder how long before we will be able to see Instagram info in the new engine.
So let’s get down to the money. If brands thought it was affordable yet confusing to tap into Facebook’s advertising structure, will they have access to better data at a higher price?
Sarah: Was it mentioned how this search applies to brands? Will they be able to take advantage of these connections? Courtney just mentioned that this will probably open advertising opportunities up for us. It’s going to be more expensive to compete at the very least.
Kevin: Good question. It will be a priority to protect our space and our clients’.
Luke: I agree, everything Facebook does now is about the $$$. It’ll be interesting to see how they turn this is into a revenue generator.
So what does the market think about this announcement?
John: They need to do something to get their stock up.
Tony: Interestingly, FB stock and Google Stock are both down right now.
Tim: I’m getting my FB news from Google+! (That’s not true at all.)
Kevin: It could be that this is later than expected or because it is not able to index the web and is thus more limited than investors wanted. Anyone catch the release date?
Joe: Facebook should have had most of this (did sort of have some of it) at its inception. The part about seeing what like-minded people are talking about seems to be more of a shot at Twitter than Google and a resurrection of sorts on the ‘networks’ that FB was originally founded on.
Bing has been a part of the current FB search bar for some time, but I am guessing it is seldom used. Like Jenneva pointed out, Bing just wants help taking web search over and could care less about social search to a degree. In the S-Fund Announcement, Bing’s CEO said something like, “I love partnering with as many people as possible.” And, while he was talking about the S-Fund and not Graph Search or search in general, that seems to be his modus operandi.
Tim: If Bing got an API to show Facebook info on Bing.com – then they’d benefit from this. Like Google shows G+ information in web search. Ohhhh, snap! Tim knows sh#t!
So how can you be like Danny Sullivan and try out Graph Search before anyone else? Well, you can’t, but you can sign up for the beta launch that will include some hundreds or thousands of people.
Sarah: It’s in beta. You have to sign up for it so some people have access – some don’t. (Of course one of those people was Danny Sullivan)
Kevin: – https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch
Luke: I just came across this on Twitter. Although, 1.4 million users probably isn’t a lot to Facebook. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebook-loses-14-million-active-users-in-us-2013-01-15?mod=wsj_share_tweet
We continued to look for updates on Graph Search when we came across the Marketwatch article with data from Social Bakers. We shared the link and although we’re still waiting on the edge of our seats for the full impact, Graph Search appears to already be changing minds.
