Facebook has just announced its new search ability.
What does this mean to the end-users?
- Yay for better search function and UI
- Ok now where do I turn this off? (really, How do I have my profile show but not my shared items? or vise versa)
Do you know what facebook is thinking about doing? Dominate the Internet!
What this really means is that, in the future, perhaps when you want to know more about "pancake recipe", you would search facebook first. There might be a group for recipes, your friend might have shared recipe before. Or even better, read what random people who you don't know have to say about it.
Sounds familiar? Right. That's what a search engine is for. However, this is a dangerous step. Facebook might very well be the only place where you can find these information. (Facebook only has public profile listings on google at the moment.) Information is power, and Facebook is withholding some information from Google.
Generally (internet) speaking, there are 3 Types of Information:
1. Main Stream (Your news outlet)
2. User generated. (Like forum, yahoo answers, wikipedia, and all them blogs)
3. Familiar/Trusted (generated by people you know)
The reason why people would use facebook over google is really the "trust". Your news source will no longer be the main media stream, instead, you go to your trusted sources. In this case, your friends and colleges. It's a powerful thing to have the first layer of trust. That being said, it doesn't mean that trust can't be built. Trust also means relevance. Your friends who grew up in the same town probably have a similar pancake recipe to yours.
Facebook is the Googlezon.
But do we really want a social network that can do everything?
