This is an important step for Facebook and I'm surprised no one has really mentioned it (all ~50 comments so far are about the graph search).<p>The big thing here isn't graph search, or the fancy searching per se. The big thing here is this:<p>> "and meet new people, too."<p>This is huge. Huge!<p>Facebook from the start was envisioned as a sort-of dating platform but that part of it got swept under the rug real quick. Throughout Facebook's history <i>meeting</i> people with Facebook has been a slim thing. Typically it was always one way:<p>Meet in real life -> Add on facebook.<p>It's only a matter of time until Facebook tries to make it the other way around. It seems they're explicitly avoiding the "dating" route, which may or may not be wise (dating sides have some weird connotations among some groups of people). It looks like they've finally found their solution.<p>The amazing thing here isn't Graph. It's that Facebook is going to change its paradigm so that meeting new people is a viable goal of going on Facebook.<p>So eventually we'll be meeting people through Facebook, starting with meetup.com style interests. That's big.
Graph Search seems like strange branding to me. I almost didn't click the link because I thought "Graph Search" was a new API and not a user-facing product (to be fair, the context was a posting on HN so I was predisposed to think API). Graph Search's real focus appears to be on the use of natural language and the presentation of/interaction with data. The "Graph" is almost the least interesting about it.
So basically facebook is what facebook was 7 years ago when you could click on a word in a profile and find out everyone else in your (college) network that also had that listed.<p>I'm glad they brought back functionality they removed forever ago.
Crazy.. I developed a Facebook Graph search about a year ago using FQL queries. It works very similarly to how Facebook implemented their Graph Search. I even put a voice recognizer on top of it. Glad to know that my crazy ideas aren't so crazy after all :)<p>Link to demo video: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ge1mH6xqSQc" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=g...</a>
They're going to have the same problem wolfram alpha has, since in the space of "all queries" only a tiny, tiny fraction of them are going to be ones that Facebook can resolve. Now, it might be less of a practical problem since the use cases for FB search are pretty clear and obvious, unlike W|A. But it doesn't sound like this is an open-ended search engine. Imagine typing say "shoes for sale on amazon" and getting "Sorry, Facebook doesn't know how to answer this query." It will quickly pigeon hole the product.<p>Also, similar to W|A, there is value in the <i>queries themselves</i> since they are mini-algorithms. If someone comes up with a clever query to get FB to say, find me people who I actually might want to hire, it could be valuable. I really hope they build an API on top of this so that startups can build products around novel queries.
1. Weird marketing, the word "Graph" doesn't mean anything to average people. Just call it "Facebook Search". Also these cold hyper emotional sounds kinda turn me off, even Apple has more friendly ads. Did they steal the music from some apocalyptic space movie trailer?<p>2. Interesting problem, to make all that data available to natural search queries. Definitely an attack on Google who still can't really answer natural queries what Marissa Mayer was talking about ages ago.<p>3. There is just stuff from Facebook what I think is problematic because people don't share everything on Facebook. If they can expand it onto the whole web, it would be a game changer, but also way more difficult to solve.<p>4. I can't think of a query I would use this for other than testing it. If I search for Apple, I want to the Apple website. So I think this is more a solution on the search for a problem. Maybe they figure that out when it's out there.
This is pretty futuristic, it's SQL for non-techies that pulls from Facebook data. The most inquisitive, but not enough to be a programmer and deal with FQL and code, will find this really useful since they can finally make use of all the objects they've acted upon and entities they've acted with.<p>It makes Facebook data actually... purposeful.<p>The next step is still to match purpose with intent to make that money.
I guess i don't get why I should care.<p>I either have to unfriend people to get it to give me stuff i care about (since it appears to have no way to explain i don't give a shit what my grandma thinks about sushi in palo alto), or it's giving me answers that don't seem better.<p>I understand they needed to improve their site/internal search, and this looks great for that. But it just doesn't seem like that big a deal to me.
What am i missing?
Facebook is one of the few things in this 'ideologyless' world that really makes my blood boil.<p>From the promo video:<p><pre><code> -The world feels smaller…
Yes, I joined the freaking World Wide Web to narrow my world view.
-On Facebook, when two people make the same search, they get completely different results!
That's a feature?
</code></pre>
People can't freaking decide where they wan't to eat or go to the movies for themselves?<p>What's maddening to me is that we are allowing someone like Zuckerberg, who obviously has many talents, but making friends is not one of them, direct our social lives. The sad thing is that it's getting harder and harder to ignore it, from work to friends. I fear that someday I might be forced to join this freakshow.
I'm torn. On one side I really like it, it reminds me of the old People Search feature Facebook used to have. On the other side for third party developers especially those who try to make the Facebook experience better, I'm afraid this is reinforcing the point you should not build 100% on platforms.<p>I'm sure there are many who have had this idea or are building this currently. Facebook Heroku templates given for new developers to start with, hit on the four main areas that Graph Search seem to provide.<p>Another example would be a query like<p><pre><code> movies liked by people who like movies I like
</code></pre>
In FQL the closest I would have gotten was<p><pre><code> SELECT name, page_id from page where page_id in (SELECT page_id from page_fan where uid in (SELECT uid2 FROM friend WHERE uid1 = me()) and profile_section='movies')
</code></pre>
And even then FQL was unstable<p>So then you wonder, why use an app with an unstable query built on an API filled with bugs when I can faster get the result using facebook.com?
Imo, this is a very smart move if the execution lives up. It gives an incentive to put up even more (structured) information to Facebook, such as Likes/people tags/etc., because now there is a more permanent point to it: it can be discovered by someone much later and become useful and interesting, as opposed to it being interesting merely up to a day on the News Feed and then disappearing forever somewhere deep in your timeline.<p>In other words, it makes building your profile feel additive and even useful.
This product doesn't make sense at all.<p>I can just query useless data from my peer group or the friends of friends group. Data which I already know and not care about.<p>But I cannot ask the really interesting questions about all Facebook users:<p>"Show me all female singles nearby with at least 30 profile photos each"<p>"Show me all female singles nearby which love to chat and respond messages within 2 hours on average."<p>"Show all females within one mile and poke them all automatically"<p>This thing is as it is half-baked: the name, the product, just everything -- far away from being "huge".<p>BTW, those kind of looking-for-female-singles-in-my-city-queries were very easy in FB's early days for quite a long time. Then, I poked them all in my city and got a conversion (poke2reply) of about 1:15.
Great, now I have even more reason to stop tagging friends, like fewer things, tighten my privacy restrictions, and tell friends to stop tagging me or checking me in to places.<p>I have no interest in my personal info being used for their search engine, nor do I want friends of friends (i.e. strangers) to contact me just because I like the same TV show or went to their favorite restaurant.
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but if you watch the video on the bottom part of the page with Zuck, one of them explicitly says how this product competes with Google. Something about how if two people search for Apple on Google, they'll get the same results, but if they search Apple on FB Graph Search, they'll get personalized results. It's really interesting from a technology perspective the way that search is becoming personalized, and we've definitely seen Google eyeballing search personalization, but it's been limited pretty much to geo and the limited info on G+. Facebook is uniquely positioned to use the volume of data on each person to provide more meaningful results.<p>From a revenue perspective, I think this is definitely competitive to Google. Not saying it will succeed, but businesses will definitely see value in advertising to hyper-specific segments and personal groups. It sounds strange to say, but I do think UI and speed will be key components of whether FB GS will do well. Search is a convenience market, and if FB GS isn't convenient, Google is always one click away.
problems:<p>1. it treats data from all friends (presumably) equally. Presumably in real life you weigh opinions of different friends differently.<p>2. search can only take place on information that your friends are willing to share publicly (or at least with all their "friends"). Presumably in real life opinions you get from people you know will be way different if they know it is a private exchange.<p>3. isn't this all a bit high on the autism spectrum? The idea that to find out information about the likes and dislikes of your "friends", you log onto a computer and do what amounts to a database search, rather than just ASK YOUR FRIENDS ???
This is Facebook trying to become Google. +1 for ambition. But lousy product and mostly meh. It's not a Google killer.<p>People go to Google to search for lots of stuff they want to know more about. Movies, sports, homework, whatever. And when they need that particular mouthwash, where do they think of first? Google. And thus the power of AdWords. The habit of general searching causes you to turn to Google when you're seeking a product.<p>Mark Z is smart, and recognizes this dynamic. So he's trying to create a destination for your search queries. The problem for him is that people already have a habit he needs to break. And what he's offering as an incentive to break it is pretty weak tea. How often will the average user (grandma in Peoria) turn to Graph Search? Not often enough to break her Google habit.<p>+1 for effort and ambition - but I doubt this is going to be much more than hype.
Some of the examples in the promo videos are pretty far-fetched. I mean, does anyone really give Facebook any information about which dentist he or she goes to? I've never even seen a post from someone talking about going to the dentist, let alone including the dentist's actual name!
Interesting to compare against Path (they announced search on 12/20 - <a href="http://www.wired.com/business/2012/12/path-social-archive/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/business/2012/12/path-social-archive/</a>):<p>Path: search personal events; discovery via proximity (nearby)<p>Facebook: search graph events; discovery via common interest<p>Seems like facebook trying to hone in on cases like dating (discovering people with common interests), and interest discovery (ie, restaurants that others like). Path seems more about making most of personal time (creating life events) in the context of a social environment.
Facebook's intent is really obvious - they are trying to replace "raw" Internet with the Facebook layer, and people would do all interactions: social, searches, shopping through their layer. This would render other companies like Google, Yelp, you name it obsolete. The problem however is in the details: how can anyone trust Facebook with their private data, searches etc. considering all the privacy issues, lack of user's control over their data, etc.? Once you're in the Matrix, you cannot unplug. That's what Facebook is trying to bring to the users.
I don't understand why people think this is going to be useful.<p>The inbuilt assumption is that people care enough about the data to want to search it frequently and thoroughly. I don't think that is true. Facebook is mostly ephemeral junk data that you don't care about; this has been true ever since they changed their UI to the Twitter-style "what are you thinking right now?" input / streaming.<p>In order for search to be useful they first have to backtrack heavily on what their entire platform is about. Which would be hard.
"Everyone on Facebook who isn't blocked by you can search for you, but what they can see in search results about you depends on what's shared with them.<p>Search results respect your privacy settings, whether it's info you’ve shared, or posts with tags of you that others have shared."<p>My Facebook profile is currently set to <i>not be visible in search</i>, because I don't want people who I didn't explicitly give my Facebook link to be able to find me. Will Facebook continue to respect this setting?
Am I the only one that doesn't usually click on "like' things? I mean things like 'dancing', 'outdoors' or 'Game Of Thrones'. Even if I like them.
First, because I don't think one day "hey, I like dancing, so I think I should state it on Facebook so everyone knows!"
And second, because most of the times, liking something gets your timeline full of useless updates.<p>Not sure if is something that adds real value for users. We'll see...
Here's what Facebook doesn't get. I have 580 friends on Facebook. These are all people I've met in real life at least once. I care, honestly, about maybe 50 of them. And of those I care about, I want to know what's going on in maybe 10 of those 50 friends' lives. Ask my how much I care about people who aren't friends with me on Facebook. About as much as I care about anybody on the internet on any site.
This bears much more resemblance to Wolfram|Alpha than it does to Google Search.<p>Glad to see natural language interfaces are finally going mainstream.
So... it's either algorithmic stalking or it's nothing that new, right? I'm going for algorithmic stalking. Now, to really be effective, I guess they're going to have to add "graph alerts" so one can get notified when (totally hypothetically), any friend of a friend living in the same city with more than n friends (to screen out the losers; replace n with your own threshold) changes her relationship status to "single". Or I guess one can just keep a saved search/smart folder of "prospects" (stalkees?) that can be "checked in" on from time to time; maybe set up a mobile alert that pings you whenever one of them is in/near your neighborhood.<p>So, I can see why advertisers or businesses might like this, and I can see why grudge-holding exes might like this, but I can't really see why I would want to be stalked. Thank god Facebook has such transparent and persistent privacy settings, or I'd really worry!<p>(yes, this is over the top)
I may be being a bit of a braggadocio, but the 5-person startup I work for in featured in their blog post announcing the product... pretty unexpected coverage!<p><a href="http://www.facebook-studio.com/news/item/introducing-graph-search-help-people-discover-your-business" rel="nofollow">http://www.facebook-studio.com/news/item/introducing-graph-s...</a>
Pretty awesome that Facebook could pull this off so quickly. I literally said that exact line to Lars (who lead the search team) during our meetings last year... I can't believe he reused verbatim in the video:<p>"Facebook is for the all the people you know... Ark is for all the people you should know".
would just like to point out:<p>Google started moving towards a more social experience from search engine by adding google plus.<p>Facebook started move towards a search engine from social experience by adding graph search.<p>They are definitely lined up to converge at a giant battleground, both coming from opposite sides of the spectrum.<p>Both will come with different strengths, however, Google's integration of its plus network is FAR superior, both technically, and in the sense of having a plan. Whether we use it or not, it is already stealing data from us, even if we dont know it.<p>IMO, google has no adversaries. FB is doing this for the fun of it.
Wow. There are a lot of interpretations on why this is HUGE - a game changer.<p>In addition to what's been mentioned above, this is the shot across the bow of Google. I suspect Google has better search, but their social graph is much worse. (Google+ is only extensively used by their captive audience) The search on Facebook will get better over time, and they have the better social graph. This also gives them a new "neat" factor that will keep people coming back, especially those bored of seeing cat and children photos from long forgotten friends.
For a company that claims to understand the importance of mobile, why are the videos still in Flash? There is absolutely no reason they couldn't have used HTML5 with Flash fallback here.
Imo, facebook is really focusing on the wrong things here. I'd have been much more enthusiastic if they offered me tools for better control over my data, for example (incidentally, I had to spend 40 minutes just the other day using a Greasemonkey script to erase my entire Timeline). Or if the chat would be less clumsy. Or if they added cloud-based tools to groups, similar to Google Docs.<p>I can't really explain what's going on in their heads… Perhaps I'm just completely out of their target market, who knows.
Oh so they finally noticed Quora and Google+. Good on them.<p>Interest based social networks will replace the hodge podge of specialty forums using anonymous names you see all over the web.
I think this has really interesting consequences in combination with the "pay money to send messages to people you aren't friends with" feature Facebook's been testing lately. That's the revenue potential I immediately saw in this product with the demo search for "people who like cycling in my hometown"--you can find them for free, but it will cost you to contact (or direct market to) them.
Interestingly Facebook's recent "Facebook Global University Hackathon" was won[1] by students who also utilized natural language processing.<p>Here is the previous discussion: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4871854" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4871854</a><p>[1] <a href="http://velocity.uwaterloo.ca/news/facebook-hackathon" rel="nofollow">http://velocity.uwaterloo.ca/news/facebook-hackathon</a>
Facebook, Please consider adding the following clause to all queries: AND WHERE deleted_at IS NULL OR deleted_at = '' OR private = ''<p>I like the idea of having a query language for facebook data. I just don't like the idea of having any of my things come up in any search. And yes, I quit FB a long time ago, but my spidey sense is tingling that FB didn't quit on my data.
A new API to see what people build before acquiring first couple of apps and throttling access?<p>Being able to weight my Google results with demographic or social graph attributes would be more useful for me - especially with purchases.<p>'restaurants in 10km range popular with 30-40 age professionals'<p>'most popular cookery books up to 3rd degree connections'<p>'top movies my close friends watched last week'
The major trend of Facebook is that it is making the world smaller by making the people you interact with a smaller bubble. This may be a very good thing. Sometimes, though, it makes me feel like we're carrying out a new type of social hierarchy by only interacting with people we are like and are friends of friends with.
It will not compete with my google searches, I usually search for wikipedia articles, homework questions, and programming tutorials/help... Seeing people with similar interest is cool but I already do that with meetup.com (very nice in Boston). I am just out of touch with most of facebook target audience? I guess so.
FB search as it is not capable to become kickass end-user-oriented product yet, it's more like a set of technologies that could be used by app developers to create cool dating\hiring\recommendation services and widgets using real-time api requests. The best apps will be acquired by Fb or just copied :)
Am I missing something?<p>The query, at one point, is "People who like Cycling and live in Seattle, Washington" yet the 2nd person "card" clearly states they live in San Francisco, California.<p>Pic: <a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2148004/Screenshots/~-mm.png" rel="nofollow">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2148004/Screenshots/~-mm.png</a>
Looking at this from a different angle: it seems new to me to see Mark Zuckerberg doing an announcement of a new feature. The video at the bottom reminded me of an Apple ad (toned down and without Jony Ive's accent).<p>I wonder if this is part of a new strategy of pushing him out to the public a little bit more.
I think this a big deal.<p>The first step to a Yelp killer? Type in "Italian Restaurant" and get back list of all the restaurants your friends have checked into. A recommendation engine.<p>For now, its mostly to filter your facebook data. But do you think it can expand and become the goto search engine, ala google?
Very cool! Can't say much else until I try it. I have a large number of conservative friends who have enabled every privacy setting and provide minimal meta-data, so I already know it won't be as the PR video depicts.<p>Anyway, This reminds me of of the Google+ search by www.findpeopleonplus.com
All the people who support this keep saying how everyone else is going to use the tool to do x, y, or z, but they haven't said what they themselves would do with it.<p>So I ask, when you have access to Graph Search, what is the first thing you'll do with it?
I don't quite see how this is big competition for Google (yet). Facebook GS can return me more data about my friends than Google can, but Google can return more results for general information. These seem very different from one another.
Two things:<p>- "The interface fundamentally determines the behavior" and this thing has a real great interface. I just don't see how this could be integrated into the facebook home screen (newsfeed).<p>- I wonder how long does it take google to copycat this thing.
I have a feeling this is more to announce facebook's <i>intent</i> to compete in search than a product they actually expect people to use. Really it sounds like a precursor to facebook's google competitor.
The video created by Facebook that explains their new "Graph Search" feature.<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200156514653891" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200156514653891</a>
Looks cool, but what is the fallout? Will Google force feed us + a bit more so that they can match/better these types of search results.<p>I need to permanently move to DuckDuckGo
Everything old is new again.<p>Back in `05, the facebook would let you search for people by interest, or age, or sex. Can't imagine why they stopped that.
live Mark Zuckerberg <a href="http://live.theverge.com/facebook-see-what-were-building-event/" rel="nofollow">http://live.theverge.com/facebook-see-what-were-building-eve...</a>
Looks like head-on with Google, and then why not? The results are specific to a user and his/her taste or surroundings. Something that Google also tries to achieve using history.<p>Would love to give it a sping. Waitlisted, uh.