Facebook unveils Graph Search, steps up battle against Google
by David Silverberg
Today Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed details about a new type of search engine on the popular social network, allowing users to find simple answers to questions about their friends.
If you ever wanted to know who among your friends likes Star Wars or took a photo of London, then the new Facebook Graph Search could be your go-to service.
Today Zuckerberg took the curtain off the souped-up search tool, saying it’s meant to provide users with a “precise answer” rather than a link to an answer by leveraging the data already present on its site.
Facebook says Graph Search focuses on four main areas — people, photos, places, and interests.
For instance, in the search field you can receive results on queries such as “friends who live in my city,” “people from my hometown who like hiking,” “friends of friends who have been to Yosemite National Park,” “software engineers who live in San Francisco and like skiing,” and much more.
For photos results, you can learn about “photos I like,” “photos of my family,” “photos of my friends before 1999,” “photos of my friends taken in New York,” for example.
Searching for places can yield a varied range of results, from “Indian restaurants liked by my friends from India,” to “countries my friends have visited.”
Finally in interests, users can use Graph Search to find “music my friends like,” “languages my friends speak,” “strategy games played by friends of my friends,” and “books read by CEOs,” among hundreds of other queries.
Facebook must’ve known privacy concerns would be raised with this rollout, and in a blog post the company wrote “We’ve built Graph Search from the start with privacy in mind, and it respects the privacy and audience of each piece of content on Facebook. It makes finding new things much easier, but you can only see what you could already view elsewhere on Facebook.”
Graph Search was launched today but it isn’t available immediately to all users. Go here to click on the join Waiting List button to be invited to try the service.
The new product is a direct shot at Google, the search engine leader. “Entering the search market gives Facebook the opportunity to compete with Google and Microsoft by giving advertisers a real use for all the likes and shares they collect on the site,” Washington Post writes.
“If Facebook would decide to become serious about search, it would be in a position to give Google a run for its money,” said Karsten Weide, an analyst with IDC, a financial research company, as Times of India writes.
How is Facebook looking to monetize Graph Search? “This could potentially be a business over time but for now we’re focused on user experience,” Zuckerberg says, according to Forbes.
This article was originally published on Digital Journal [Link]
Facebook testing new feature Highlight to let you pay to promote status updates to more friends
Social media giant Facebook is testing a new tool called Highlight, letting users pay a small fee to make sure their status updates reach more friends, it’s been reported by TechCrunch.
Highlight lets the average user, not Pages or businesses, select an “important post” and make sure friends see the update, the blog explains.
Highlighted posts could appear higher in the news feed, stay visible for longer, and display in front of more friends and subscribers. “However, they’re not colored differently to make them stand out. And to be clear, this is not like Twitter’s Promoted Tweets which is designed for businesses. Facebook Highlight is for the end-user.”
New Zealand is reportedly a testing ground for this new feature, which hasn’t been rolled out officially yet. Facebook wrote to TechCrunch: “We’re constantly testing new features across the site. This particular test is simply to gauge people’s interest in this method of sharing with their friends.”
A New Zealand report states “The trial appears to mark Facebook’s first attempt to make money from postings by regular users and comes as it is gearing up for a public listing which is expected to value the company at about US$90 billion.”
The experiment is playing with different fees for this feature, including a free option. A screenshot of the feature shows a screen asking for $1.80 US to use Highlight.
Facebook floats on stock market May 17, will be valued at $100 billion
by JohnThomas Didymus (Guest contributor/Digital Journalist)
Facebook, the world’s largest social network, is expected to go public on May 17. The online giant is expected to be valued at $100 billion. Analysts say that Facebook’s is the most anticipated stock offering from Silicon Valley since Google in 2004.
The May 17 date, according to TechCrunch, is subject to SEC approval of relevant paperwork, including those relating to recently purchasedInstagram.TechCruch reports Facebook is expected to raise $10 billion from its initial public offering of shares, though it may be a smaller sum. But the IPO will also depend on approval by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The Examiner reports that Facebook valuation reflects current levels of trading in the secondary market and also matches a report on how Facebook won over Instagram.
The flotation will make Facebook among the largest public companies in the world with companies like McDonald’s, Amazon.com and Visa.According to a sources, “Investors want as high a price as possible so that the secondary market won’t look like a problem.”
TechCrunch reports that “with 2.51 billion fully-diluted shares outstanding, the valuation desired would price the company at around $40 a share.”
According to Daily Mail, the world’s largest social network had very humble beginnings. It began as a dorm room project for a Harvard dropout, Mark Zuckerberg, but has since grown and reached the top in less than a decade.
According to Facebook’s preliminary filing, the company’s net income rose 65 percent to $1 billion in 2011, with a revenue of $3.7 billion.
Valued at $100 billion, double the value of Hewlett-Packard, Facebook’s IPO will be bigger than that of any dot-com company expecting to go public, Daily Mail reports.
This article originally appeared on Digital Journal [Link]
Facebook revamps Chat tools, adds Video and Group functions
Facebook is rolling out a redesigned Chat service, adding functions to let Facebook users video-chat with friends. Group Chat has also been introduced for users who want to talk to multiple friends at once.
In a streaming live announcement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered details of a redesigned Facebook Chat, in order to create more layers on the company’s “social infrastructure,” as Zuckerberg described it.
“Given that we’re one of the biggest chat networks in world, these will be meaningful tools for that part of communication,” Zuckerberg added.
As previously reported on DigitalJournal.com, Facebook is adding video to its Chat service. Video calling, powered by Skype, is now built into Chat, allowing any Facebook user to video-chat with another user with two clicks of a button. A plug-in takes around 30 seconds to download, and users need to have cameras equipped on their computers.
Video chatting is one of the new apps flowing over Facebook’s social infrastructure, Zuckerberg said.
Skype CEO Tony Bates appeared in the press conference to say Skype is talking with Facebook about introducing some paid products available through the Web format. Bates added that half of Skype’s traffic is video calling
Group video chat isn’t available yet, but Zuckerberg said he wouldn’t rule out the possibility in the future. He also added video chatting isn’t available yet for mobile.
Facebook is also introducing Group Chat: one of its more requested feature, multi-person chatting will let Facebook users talk to many people at once, simply by adding another friend to a conversation. A button is clearly marked Add Friends to Chat. Multi-person chat is already possible on chat services such as Gmail Chat.
Finally, Zuckerberg announced a Chat redesign rolling out today. A new sidebar lists the people you message most, even listing your top Friends who might not be online. The sidebar scales to individual browser sizes and is not yet available for mobile users.
Earlier in the announcement, Zuckerberg dangled a few tantalizing stats: Facebook has now reached 750 million members, and users are now sharing 4 billion “things” on Facebook daily, as Zuckerberg put it.
[Via Digital Journal]