Lots of industry pundits were expecting Facebook to announce it was releasing its own phone today, despite the fact that the company has long denied it was working on any such thing.
What the company has been working on is a search function that works within Facebook. The results returned will be based on what people in your network have done, said and shared.
The rollout of Graph Search will be staggered, as was the implementation of Timeline. So, Australian Facebook users will have to wait a few weeks longer than our U.S. counterparts for access.
As a personal user of Facebook, Graph Search will allow you to easily find things that are relevant to you, based on your friends information. So, it has a definite purpose from a local, geographic search perspective. Just last week, one of my Facebook friends who is planning a trip back to Australia stated on his wall that it would be so much easier if he could just ‘find his Facebook friends in Sydney’. Well, with Graph Search, that will indeed be possible.
As a company, it will allow greater understanding and data to be collected about the depth and breadth of a content marketing strategy. Until now, executing a search of this nature has been tricky, at best.
Plus, strategically for Facebook, this is a big push in the direction of taking on Google in the search stakes. Does this mean Google+ is encroaching on the stranglehold that Facebook as in the social space.
It’s interesting times. In video #1, hear from Mr Zuckerberg himself about what Graph Search will do. In video #2, understand privacy and Facebook Graph.