Albeit played-down as something interesting for the future, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg revealed Tuesday at TechCrunch Disrupt, FB’s intention to move towards search, stating they already serve a billion queries per day – “and we’re not even trying”.
Already shared with Bing searches; Facebook sit on a colossal amount of data far beyond what Web sites their 900 million users like and share, their status updates or place of work. Facebook know all their friends’ information too and the relationships that interlink them; this puts FB in a powerful position in terms of search – particularly when serving generic queries.
A real-world example would be a less savvy searcher, looking to buy their spouse a “birthday present”. Google’s results are equally as generic as the “birthday present” query. Each Web site sells birthday presents but it is not personalised beyond Google plus ones and only if the searcher is signed in.
Given the same example, Facebook could further enhance the query and personalise the results it serves, so longs as the searcher is signed in, though far greater users are signed in to Facebook than Google.
Our example searcher queries Facebook for the same generic phrase “birthday present” and FB enhance the query before returning results, here’s how:
- The searcher’s relationship status – they have a spouse (Laura)
- Who’s birthday is next week
- Laura lists reading fictional literature as a hobby in her About page
- She updated her status recently “Just finished the first Harry Potter book! Brilliant!”
- …While she was in a Barnes and Noble book store
The list could continue though already Facebook could confidently return https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/harry-potter-paperback-boxed-set-books-1-7-j-k-rowling/1108948862?ean=9780545162074 as a page one result. For even the generic queries; Facebook can serve personalised results – and also ads.
https://t.me/s/bEeFcAsInO_OfFiCiAlS