In case you overlooked any juicy details about your Facebook friends, Facebook is releasing its sophisticated Graph Search tool bar to U.S. users today. If you didn’t get a chance to test it yet, be prepared for an eye-opening experience.
Boatloads of data can be uncovered within your social network including connections to places, hobbies, and of course, your friends. Search fields, including “relationship status”, remind us that “it’s complicated” when it comes to privacy. Even photos, videos, posts, and comments can be filtered down to a granular level (prompting you to delete anything remotely embarrassing).
This search transparency can make anyone uncomfortable, especially parents. While some search fields are unavailable to adults searching for minors, the “tech-savvy” will likely find loopholes while others still struggle with cover photos.
Despite criticism over its ability to maximize revenue, Facebook is not including ad sponsored stories in search results. Having streamlined its ad offerings recently, Facebook is showing its historic focus of putting User Experience first. If Facebook users don’t appreciate this, Google certainly will.
Perhaps Engineation and other tech companies can be reminded of an important lesson here. When it comes to innovation, you can’t please everyone. Some Facebook users may not “like” Graph Search, but it still ignites the feedback loop, keeping the social conversation going. Or is that a marketing lesson?
By Christie Calahan
For more details on today’s Facebook change, here are the details on CNET:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57592584-93/facebook-begins-rolling-out-graph-search-to-u.s-users/