Facebook Graph Search (FGS) is a huge search with social chains and human tags

Facebook Graph Search (FGS) is Zuckerberg's "first huge product release", so its importance cannot be ignored. He also said that this is not web search, so it is not competing with Google. We should trust Zuckerberg's First sentence, but we cannot fully trust him's second sentence.

What is FGS? Its function enables users to search for information on social networks. For example, "my friends like restaurants in New York ?", "My last year's photo with someone", "my friends visited the National Park", etc. If you split the technical module, there should be three: 1) natural language understanding (that is, the user input should be converted into a database), 2) crawls and mines user information (including active and non-active input, such as social networking, click habits, and like). 3) converts massive amounts of user information into a huge database.

The short-term goal is to turn the search on every page of Facebook into a real social search. Now, users can only search for the first type of content, and quickly start searching for the above content. However, this is only the first step. In the future, Facebook will use this function to activate its most valuable advantages: 1) social networking, 2) content on the Internet that won't be crawled by Google, 3) Key Information provided by the like button, 4) the great value of Data Mining in the above three aspects.

Therefore, in the long term, FGS can be compared with Google search, but it is based on the social field. Google searches for information text, while FGS searches for information and choices from friends. Google uses hyperlinks and anchor text between pages to determine the relevance and weight. FGS uses social links and like between people to determine the relevance and weight. When Google was launched, it only had text, followed by film, video, and news... FGS only includes photos and restaurants, and various other information will be added later. Google uses users' click behaviors to Optimize search, And FGS uses like to Optimize search more directly.

Do not underestimate that FGS is only exploring the information of your friends. It will also understand and explore the choices of all users, including new friends and experts in a certain field, of course, there will also be options, demands, and comments for everyone (just like on Douban and Weibo, people you trust will spread out from your friends ).

In the end, FGS may become a huge search with social chains and human tags. Its search scope can cover the well-developed and cold Internet content of Google (such as news, text, and maps), or the content that Google has never done well, there is no human social networking for bad content (such as shopping, catering, social networking, job hunting, and knowledge Q & ).

Are you still skeptical? After FGS was launched, Yelp (the "public comments" in the United States) fell by 7%. This also represents Wall Street's analysis that yelp may be the first victim of FGS. In addition, LinkedIn and other companies are also considered as challenging in the future.

Do you still think social search is useful? Think about how many people around you said, "if I want to find XXX information, I will go to Sina Weibo to search, not Baidu ?" This proves that in some fields, a pure text search that has not yet used social media chains can be more valuable than traditional search. FGS's ambition and technology far surpass Sina Weibo's search.

What is the commercial value of FGS? Zhang Peng said: "If the user value of this product is truly confirmed, no matter whether the business cycle is rapidly formed or not, it will bring changes to the connection methods between the original Internet and the real world, this is a dual disruption of technology and model." I strongly agree with this. We all know that users trust best friend recommendations, so Facebook will fully explore this value (without compromising user experience ), it allows users to learn what they really like, including offline friends, online talents, and all users, and connect them online and offline.

Can FGS make money? On the one hand, we should be very optimistic, because the search is the most targeted, and you can use search words to activate highly relevant ads that advertisers are willing to bid, besides, Facebook has more information about you. However, on the other hand, too quick or quick advantage will hurt the user experience. At this stage, Facebook will not insert a related content that is not recommended by user friends. So I guess Facebook will use this opportunity to let more sellers make their Facebook pages ready, and then promote them in a low profile when users are concerned. For example, if a user asks, "What is my friend's favorite Beijing restaurant ?" Then I found that my friends like Dade and Quanjude. If Dade is a paying merchant, you can dress up its link more beautifully or tell users about new dishes and discounts. Therefore, the outlook for monetization should be very optimistic, but also very long-term.

Will this happen soon? Can Facebook quickly surpass Google search? Of course not. Zuckerberg clearly said that this is a long-term plan. Today, we only see the tip of the iceberg. In addition, Google is not standing around waiting to be overtaken. Google has long integrated Google + into Google's product line. Of course, FGS also announced that it is integrated with Bing.

Therefore, we should understand social search in this way. It is not just a vertical search, it will be integrated with Web search, and a search with social characteristics is an important milestone. The two great companies entered each other's fields, and it was hard to predict who was dead.