With Graph Search, Facebook Bets on More Sharing
SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook's greatest triumph has been to persuade a seventh of the world's population to share their personal lives online. — Now the social network is taking on its archrival, Google, with a search tool to mine …
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook had been exploring the implications of curated search built from its social graph before the Graph Search launch. The product turns the network's accumulated personal connections and preferences into a search interface, placing Facebook more directly against Google.
The launch follows Facebook's confirmed removal of users' ability to opt out of search results, making the privacy implications immediate rather than peripheral. Google had already pursued social-graph data from across the web, but Facebook's advantage is access to activity created within its own service.
First-order effects
- Facebook users' shared profiles, connections and preferences become more discoverable through Graph Search, while the removed search opt-out narrows their control over that visibility.
- Facebook gains a direct search product with which to contest Google for queries rooted in people, places and recommendations.
Second-order effects
- Google faces a stronger case for improving how its search products use social signals, because Facebook can organize data that users have supplied within a single network.
- Facebook's incentive shifts toward eliciting more structured, searchable sharing: the usefulness of Graph Search depends on the breadth and quality of the social data members contribute.
Third-order effects
- If social data becomes a durable search input, control of the underlying identity graph—not only web indexing—becomes a route to search traffic and the commercial value attached to it.
- The combination of searchable personal activity and reduced opt-out control puts privacy settings at the center of product competition, rather than treating them as a separate policy issue.
The trend: Search is expanding from indexing the web to organizing personal networks, with proprietary social graphs becoming a competitive asset.