Data released by Facebook today reveals that Facebook is indeed the “Most used people search engine on the web.” Does Facebook have any plans of going head on with Google? You bet! Last month I suggested that Microsoft needs to purchase Facebook ASAP if they want to gain in online advertising as well as search. People related searches make up over 30% of all searches worldwide. Facebook handles 500 million searches whereas Google handles 3.85 billion search queries. If we estimate that 30% of all searches are people related, that would mean 1.15 billion searches completed by Google are people related. That suggests that Facebook is completing a huge percentage of people searches worldwide. Whether or not they are the “Most used people search engine on the web,” remains to be seen. One is thing is for sure: Facebook has been self-declared as the people search engine. Aditya Agarwal states it clearly:
We have big plans to improve Facebook search in the upcoming months. We want to leverage the power of the social graph to further improve the quality of the results and ensure that you find what you are looking for on Facebook.
They are looking to become the number one people search engine on the web. What makes Facebook’s search engine unique is its ability to customize search results to each user based on their position in the “social graph.” Aditya gives a brief explanation:
Facebook search results are sorted by an approximation of social graph distance. People closer to you in the graph—your friends and people in your networks—are likely to be more relevant to you and thus are ranked higher. We also use this concept of “social proximity” to order results within applications like groups and events. Facebook search’s key differentiator is that search results are unique to every user because they are based on a individual’s place in the social graph.
It takes some serious algorithms to calculate social graph distance. When I was programming a social network a few years back I realized that this would be one of the key issues is performing searches. Friendster suffered greatly due to their inefficiencies in determining social proximity (and additionally their inability to handle scalability). Facebook has gracefully tackled this problem and has clearly stated their intentions to improve their search further. This is yet another area where MySpace has failed to seize a valuable opportunity. MySpace’s people search is one of the most inefficient systems out there. Now that Facebook has knocked MySpace out of the running in that area it is time to take Google head on.
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Nick,Friendster's attempt at the social graph — showing the chain of connections between any two people — was a really cool feature but as you assert, supporting it proved to be a huge competitive disadvantage as that and failure to robustly support basic features like email compelled people to switch when a more nimble, stripped down and exciting competitor emerged. MySpace has done well avoiding the same quagmire of supporting technical social features beyond their means while instead delivering superficial but practical features like blogs and boards to their audience. That Google would pay handsomely to remedy their search deficiency makes MySpace look like geniuses. But however well their strategy proved against the hapless Friendster, it will fail them in this latest round of the social network war. MySpace is too busy monetizing eyeballs while Facebook is increasing their competitive advantage lead through deep social innovation. The deal with Google was a monetization event too — search is a staid service to be outsourced, not a dynamic distinguishing feature. MySpace is taking a lot of lumps. I'm curious to see if they with their Hollywood dealmaking mindset can do any better than Yahoo at mounting an effective response to focused technocratic challenges.
Comment by Minger — July 6, 2007 @ 2:06 pm
Nick,
Friendster's attempt at the social graph — showing the chain of connections between any two people — was a really cool feature but as you assert, supporting it proved to be a huge competitive disadvantage as that and failure to robustly support basic features like email compelled people to switch when a more nimble, stripped down and exciting competitor emerged. MySpace has done well avoiding the same quagmire of supporting technical social features beyond their means while instead delivering superficial but practical features like blogs and boards to their audience. That Google would pay handsomely to remedy their search deficiency makes MySpace look like geniuses. But however well their strategy proved against the hapless Friendster, it will fail them in this latest round of the social network war. MySpace is too busy monetizing eyeballs while Facebook is increasing their competitive advantage lead through deep social innovation. The deal with Google was a monetization event too — search is a staid service to be outsourced, not a dynamic distinguishing feature. MySpace is taking a lot of lumps. I'm curious to see if they with their Hollywood dealmaking mindset can do any better than Yahoo at mounting an effective response to focused technocratic challenges.
Comment by Minger — July 6, 2007 @ 3:06 pm
Nick,We believe this is very powerful form of search that matches the actions people take in the real world. A great example, I have a friend that recently purchased a mountain property. I don’t believe he is an expert on Mountain properties however the two of us share certain aspects of our personality that would lead me to believe that whatever road he walked down to find the property he ended up with be of huge value to me in my own search.Lijit ( http://www.lijit.com ) provides the facebook capability outlined in Aditya’s post ( http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2535632130 ), but we do it on the wide open web. In the above example I went to my friends blog and entered “Keystoneâ€, knowing from his previous posts that he had purchased a property there. The results I get back from Lijit include the posts he made about the property, his del.icio.us bookmarks relating to his search including the real-estate agent he used. Also included were photos of his property from his wife uploaded to her flickr account that were brought into the search via the linkage between his blog, hers, and then out to her photos. All automatically.It’s a powerful concept, and I believe the idea of being able to relocate the search locus is powerful for Facebook in the same way it is powerful to Lijit. People are the ultimate metadata.
Comment by Todd Vernon — July 7, 2007 @ 5:56 am
Nick,
We believe this is very powerful form of search that matches the actions people take in the real world. A great example, I have a friend that recently purchased a mountain property. I don’t believe he is an expert on Mountain properties however the two of us share certain aspects of our personality that would lead me to believe that whatever road he walked down to find the property he ended up with be of huge value to me in my own search.
Lijit ( http://www.lijit.com ) provides the facebook capability outlined in Aditya’s post ( http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2535632130 ), but we do it on the wide open web. In the above example I went to my friends blog and entered “Keystoneâ€, knowing from his previous posts that he had purchased a property there. The results I get back from Lijit include the posts he made about the property, his del.icio.us bookmarks relating to his search including the real-estate agent he used. Also included were photos of his property from his wife uploaded to her flickr account that were brought into the search via the linkage between his blog, hers, and then out to her photos. All automatically.
It’s a powerful concept, and I believe the idea of being able to relocate the search locus is powerful for Facebook in the same way it is powerful to Lijit. People are the ultimate metadata.
Comment by Todd Vernon — July 7, 2007 @ 6:56 am