Comments - Is Facebook's New Graph Search Engine a Danger to Google? - TechHui2024-03-28T14:52:54Zhttp://www.techhui.com/profiles/comment/feed?attachedTo=1702911%3ABlogPost%3A116997&xn_auth=noNo mobile search is a big fla…tag:www.techhui.com,2013-02-21:1702911:Comment:1172262013-02-21T12:25:09.894ZBrianhttp://www.techhui.com/profile/Brian268
No mobile search is a big flaw. Who looks for restaurants from home compared to when out?<br />
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Big advantage google has is search is part of its branding. People know to use it for search. Whether or not your Facebook friends eat there is only relevant if you share tastes which is not always true.<br />
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Some of your statements are just wrong. It is really easy to search for people with skills on LinkedIn but you need the pro feature for that to work well. For their user base it makes sense. If you're a…
No mobile search is a big flaw. Who looks for restaurants from home compared to when out?<br />
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Big advantage google has is search is part of its branding. People know to use it for search. Whether or not your Facebook friends eat there is only relevant if you share tastes which is not always true.<br />
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Some of your statements are just wrong. It is really easy to search for people with skills on LinkedIn but you need the pro feature for that to work well. For their user base it makes sense. If you're a successful headhunter etc its just a business expense. I have many "real" friends on yelp and social there works pretty well and it does use real names contrary to your statement. There are problems with yelp (shady review tweaking practices) that are much bigger for them going forward than the fact they hide people's last names (initial only).<br />
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Facebook's key weakness is its reliance on stated rather than revealed preferences. Graph search isn't really that revolutionary for them relative to how their advertising filters have worked for a while. What i mean is they already had the backend but just hadnt exposed it to most users. So its new in that sense but not "new" and interesting. The targeted ads actually reveal the weaknesses of the stated vs revealed approach.<br />
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Amazon's suggestions share the same problem when working with little information (as do most such algorithms). If you haven't bought things lately and you buy say.. Vacuum filters. It'll assume you're interested in other ones which of course is silly since most people would only own one vacuum.<br />
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So in the case of graph search maybe I'm a fringe member of a clique (common), and that clique lives in Kapolei and hence eats at Chili's often (because its Kapolei and well.. Yeah). Does that mean when I search for "food places" I want to get Chili's Kapolei because I have 30 acquaintances that eat there? Probably not.<br />
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Which isn't to say graph search is useless. I see the cases but its overhyped and I disagree it's disruptive. Its more TV and radio than mp3 and album. Google overall retains stronger search and they cleverly weave it through all their products. Facebook only really has one product (their userbase) and until they start learning their preferences rather than waiting for them to like them, their approach will retain the associated disadvantages.<br />
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Interesting blog post though and overall nicely assembled, though we may disagree.