Tag Archives: Graph

Facebook’s New Graph Search Tool

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ba795 FacebookGraph Facebook’s New Graph Search Tool
When it comes to Marketing with Twitter and Facebook, nothing is more important than the knowledge of how users interact with those services. Twitter hasn’t been making many major changes, but Facebook is constantly implementing new things and letting (forcing) users to deal with them. Their newest feature is an updated search called “Graph Search.”

Graph Search represents Facebook’s aim for the future. It appears that they really do want to compete with search engines like Google, at least for some subjects. It’s not a web search per se, it’s a little more finely honed. You would use Graph Search to find things that already exist on Facebook’s network. Mostly, you can search for people, photos, places and interests, which actually covers a lot of what people use search engines for in the first place.

As an example, you could search for TV shows that are watched by fans of Chevrolet. You could search for the favorite pages of friends of friends. You could search for pictures of cars from a particular city. You can also go by social cues, and look for restaurants in your area that are liked by your friends. Basically, any way you can think of combining the data available to Facebook, you can search that way.

If your search absolutely stumps Facebook, then you’ll be given results from Bing instead. This will do a lot to bolster Bings slow rise out of obscurity, but won’t damage Google too much, at least in the short run.

This will have a lot of implications for both users and businesses. As a business owner, you’ll be able to perform clever searches and find prospective customers. As a customer, you’ll be able to comb through the grit and find the businesses that have strong, positive social cues and fit your needs.

We’ll keep on top of the updates (Graph Search is still in beta) and figure out all the things that Graph Search will ultimately be capable of. In the meantime, Google probably isn’t afraid, but you can bet they’re taking notice.

Want some help with your social media? Contact Wikimotive for a free consultation!

Facebook Made a Big Change this Week and it Wasn’t Graph Search

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23401 Facebook Thumbnails Facebook Made a Big Change this Week and it Wasn’t Graph Search

As I’ve already stated, Graph Search will not be as big of a deal for businesses as many are making it out to be. They did, however, start a potentially major shift in the way they handle their ecosystem and particularly how it affects outbound links if reports from Social Fresh are correct.

The company has always been pretty closed up in how it handles links. They have been accused of maintaining a closed garden, one that wants to keep users engaged with content on Facebook alone. This is bad for businesses and individuals who want to share links. If EdgeRank frowns upon links, then they aren’t getting seen. It has forced many to resort to an image-only policy with their Facebook posts. Trying to operate a social media marketing campaign with images alone is challenging.

Now, they appear to have increased the size of thumbnails that display on the Facebook news feed when links are posted. This could be a huge development and may point towards a trend that many have hoped would happen for a long time. Facebook’s usefulness not only as a marketing platform but also as a general use website has been hampered by their envious treatment of anything that takes people away from the platform. People don’t expect to find as much interesting news or intriguing outside content on Facebook the way they can get it on Twitter and other social sites.

By increasing the size of the thumbnails and potentially improving the way that the platform interacts with links, it could mean a shift that they’re recognizing the need to fill other roles. They aren’t just the site to find the latest images of little Timmy sliding into third base if all of this is true. They could become a hub for discussions of more worldly interest as well as a venue where quality content off of Facebook can be shared with a reasonable expectation of exposure.

We’ll be testing this out over the next few days (even weeks if it pans out) and we’ll let you know if the shift is a major one or merely a tweaking of their display capabilities.

35da3 Big Square Thumbnails Facebook Made a Big Change this Week and it Wasn’t Graph Search

Don’t Overreact About Facebook Graph Search

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16222 Facebook Graph Search Don’t Overreact About Facebook Graph Search

I found it humorous that Yelp’s stock prices fell after Facebook announced Graph Search. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Facebook over the years, it’s that the only thing they’ve been able to slay in their various attempts to jump into something was social networking pioneer MySpace, and even they’re bringing sexy back to some extent. Facebook didn’t kill Foursquare. It couldn’t kill Twitter. It never emerged as a blip on Amazon’s radar and their Craigslist killer was a no-show. No, Facebook will not replace Yelp for business reviews and they won’t make a measurable impression on Google’s search dominance.

Facebook Graph Search has a very high potential of greatly improving the user experience. It will be able to keep people more engaged than they already are (if that’s even possible) with what their friends and family are doing. It will make some users more cautious about what they like on Facebook, while making other users increase their liking ways. In many ways, it will have users sculpting their Facebook profiles, interests, photos, and liked pages to fit in with how they want to be perceived.

It may assist with dating as some have speculated. Finding people of like-interests among your friends will be easier, so saying, “Hey Betty, I didn’t know you like rock climbing. I’m hitting a cliff this weekend if you’re interested,” will be more common.

From a purely business and marketing perspective, there will be changes to strategy that will come and go. Things will work for a time, then stop working, then potentially become damaging, then work again all of a sudden a few weeks later. That’s just part of the ebb and flow of Facebook marketing. The right strategies become the wrong strategies and then re-emerge as the right strategies later.

If there’s one thing that businesses, particularly localized ones, can do now to prepare for the changes, it’s that they have to be more engaging (gosh I hate that word sometimes) and strive to not only get local likes but to keep them. They cannot be an eyesore, an embarrassment to a fan base that will be much more public in their likings. People will need reasons to continue to like pages as they start to feel the need to prune and improve how the world views their tastes and interests. Start now. Make yours the type of page that people will proudly like, the type of page that brings value to the fans. Otherwise, the “great benefits” to business that many are already preaching will turn out to be the trigger for a mass exodus of your company’s exposure on social media.

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Facebook Graph Search Vs Google: How Does It Work?

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Facebook is launching an enhanced search system designed to understand queries expressed in regular English. Dubbed as ‘Graph Search,’ the name implies searching for specific criterion within your social network graph. It has the ability to rank your friends according to who you have interacted with the most and reveal your closer friends at the top part of the results page.

Using the graph search is a no-brainer. You don’t even have to think of smart key words to get good search results as what is normally done when you use Google. Questions such as “Which of my friends watch ‘American Idol,” and “How many of my friends liked the movie ‘The Notebook” can actually be searched for.

facebook graph search 3 Facebook Graph Search Vs Google: How Does It Work?

With graph search, you and your friends can also come up with a photo popularity contest wherein the photo with the most number of ‘Likes’ wins. Graph search has the special ability to rank photos according to the people who you had categorized as the most important in your Friends list. Also, if a photo shows a local business and got a thumbs-up from your friends, then it could be the beginning of understanding good businesses that you may need for future use.

Graph search is still in beta form and appears like a big blue search bar found at the top part of your Facebook page. Users are encouraged to either sign up while it’s still in beta or wait for a beta invite in its waiting list.

facebook graph search 2 Facebook Graph Search Vs Google: How Does It Work?

Tom Stocky and Lars Rasmussen, product manager and engineering manager respectively, stated in the official Facebook blog post that users can combine phrases when searching for photos, places, people and other shared content in Facebook. Users are assured of their privacy since they can only see that they have already seen elsewhere on Facebook.

If the search seemed futile, Graph search will redirect users to Facebook’s web search partner which is Bing by Microsoft. Apparently, earlier negotiations with Google to gain access to Facebook results didn’t materialize.

Zuckerberg reiterates that Graph Search is new and available on a limited status. As of the moment, only four areas are covered such as interests, places, photos, and people. With this in mind, it’s clear that Graph search goes in a direction which is very different from where Google is going.

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Facebook Graph Search Shows Bing on Results — No Google Love?

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The infamous social network giant Facebook (FB) led by Mark Zuckerberg has recently shared that it will partner with Microsoft and Bing for its new Graph Search Tool.

facebook graph search 31 Facebook Graph Search Shows Bing on Results No Google Love?

This forged partnership means that the new tool will include a wider range of web results. For one, it is known that people or users in general won’t really care about Graph Search if its intended use is very limited. And since Facebook cannot do all things at once expected from it, this is where Bing comes in. Bing has the capability to find and offer information and data like current weather conditions. Actually FB is quite integrated with Bing with the latter already been providing search results for the social network giant for some time now.

With Graph Search, Bing results are simply put or placed on the front and center and this is added with a social context. According to Mr. Zuckerberg, the essence of sharing something on his social network is for people to broadcast and spread things. In relation to this, they should also have the capability to retract these things and eventually have it removed immediately if necessary. It is no surprise that Microsoft got into the action since it is more willing to do specific jobs (than Google) for the Zuckerberg-led company.

It is said that a Facebook-Google partnership is still open for negotiation but only time will tell.

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