Facebook Map search controversy large data storage fragmentation flaw

Search has always been the most profitable business in the internet industry. Facebook has surpassed Google in recent years, but Google's profits have outpaced Facebook by nearly 10 times times. How to make nuggets of users and data is always a problem for Facebook.

This month, Facebook unveiled its "Atlas search" of social search tools in the site, and the company's CEO, Zuckerberg, said at the press conference that Graph search will now be an important part of Facebook's product, followed by dynamic push (news Feed) and timeline (time line) became the company's third-largest pillar.

Zuckerberg and the head of the mapping project also said at the press conference that the product's services are almost all-encompassing, equivalent to LinkedIn (professional social networking site), Yelp (on-site), Foursquare (check-in), Match (Dating/marriage website) and even all the services Google can offer.

Although Facebook has massive data and has changed the way people use the Internet, it hopes to achieve such an omnipotent service through site search and challenge Google, which is far from data richness and user demand.

Map search focus on social Information

Google last May launched the "Knowledge Map" (Knowledge Graph) search function, as long as the Google search engine to type words or phrases, on the right side of the traditional search results will be a column to directly display the terms of the information, this information from Wikipedia and other information services provided by the website. Compared with previous browsing methods, users have removed their access to the information source site, Google directly to the information presented in the search page.

Google's knowledge map function and the Facebook map search are "Atlas" word. In the mobile Internet era, image collection and presentation have been unprecedented growth, so the image search becomes more and more important. Google is only the atlas of the introduction of 500 million entries and 3 billion information. The Facebook search also introduces many entries from Wikipedia.

If you search for "China" in Google, China's national flag pictures and basic information will appear on the right, with Chinese news and travel information on the left. The Facebook search will also show the basic information about China, as well as show China's most popular locations, books about China, photos taken in China by friends and friends in China.

This shows that the map search focuses on social and location, not information. Since most of the information generated on Facebook is more personal and fragmented, the query is focused on the effectiveness of the information. For example, when searching for "SUV" or "smartphone", you can only search for some related accounts, without valid information.

Big and not special

On the day the Facebook search was launched, the social review website Yelp shares tumbled 6%. In fact, although Facebook has a similar function to comment and sign in, its information is far less informative than a professional comment site. Comments on the site have a detailed classification of consumption, such as restaurant type, rating, area, average consumption amount, specialty dishes. Comments on the site's information, not only by users, but also through the site to vigorously expand, maintain and effective user incentive mechanism to obtain. And Facebook can provide information on the user's own initiative, is simply "praise", and does not guarantee that each photo is labeled with the right label, to become effective information.

As the search expert Danny Shaliven, Danny Sullivan, says, most people on Facebook may not be careful to click the "Praise" button for their electricians, plumbers or dentists, and they may not even know if those people are on Facebook if they have an account. Therefore, in providing a wide range of recommendations, it is difficult to threaten a dedicated site.

Lars Rasmussen Lars Rasmussen, head of Facebook Engineering and the graph search team, said the Atlas search could do a good job in social recruitment and dating, but the two services are not optimistic at the moment.

In social recruiting, LinkedIn offers both recruiters and job seekers a professional tool and a place to share, while on Facebook, there is no effective tool, no complete CV, income, position, or skill to work with. Even a lot of people will not fill out their own work units and graduate schools. Because few people want to share their work experiences and feelings with their friends, no one wants their colleagues and bosses to know they are ready to jump.

Career information and love and marriage information are more sensitive to privacy, there are not many people who want to advertise this information, and job seekers and search partners prefer to pass on more professional and confidential channels to the willing, rather than to friends, colleagues and family around them.

Commercial logic Incomplete

Search engines are seen as a cash cow because of the implied purchase intention in the user's search. Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie Securities (Macquarie Nomura), points out that, basically, Atlas searches make it more structured and easier to search for Facebook users to 50多亿次 activities every day. "This should make users, and more importantly advertisers, more useful for finding Facebook data," Schacter said in a memo to investors. ”

But the premise is that a lot of users can develop the habit of searching on Facebook. The current amount of information and user experience on Facebook do not yet reach this requirement. For example, searching for "smartphones" on Facebook, the AutoFill feature on the page will take you to a Samsung smartphone or Wal-Mart account. Obviously, these advertisers will be happy, but the users are looking for smartphone-related news, reviews or quotes, rather than some irrelevant pictures and promotional campaigns.

Social media, led by Facebook, has created an unprecedented boom in "user-generated content", making it much faster and more widespread. The challenge to Google's search is actually a challenge to the professional content provider by creating content for users. But compared with a single type of "user-created content" sites, such as Wikipedia, LinkedIn, and Yelp, the logic of the Atlas search is unclear. The content of a single type of Web site is heavily targeted and maintained, and there is a complete incentive system, so the data structure is clear and the content created by Facebook users is too spontaneous and fragmented.

In addition to the data structure, there is a problem of user privacy in the Atlas search. The intention of Facebook's inception was to build an extension of the reality of friend relationships, and the targeted services promoted by the Atlas search were clearly contrary to the intent of Facebook's application, which, if improperly manipulated, was likely to be lost because of concerns about privacy being mined.