Potential of billions of dollars
Google has anticipated this movement of Facebook well by coming up with its own social network Google+ . Google+ does not have nearly the same number of users as Facebook and therefore cannot answer the questions that are asked on the new Facebook platform. Google generates more than 40 billion dollars in advertising revenue worldwide every year. If Facebook nibbles away just a few percent of Google's share with its new service, the company will have a product in its hands that has the potential to be worth billions of dollars.
Find runners who are running the same route as you
Now Facebook only communicates with four entities from its own database, but what if it also unlocks the list to data immense amount of data that third-party applications collect every day? Think of the data that an application like Spotify collects. Then it suddenly becomes possible to find out who in your circle of friends listened to the song Friday by Rebecca Black the most. Or think of a fitness application: you can easily find a runner who covers the same route at the same speed as you. Facebook, like Google, has a database of intentions in its hands, but one on steroids.
Privacy remains an issue
Recently, Mark Zuckerberg's sister made headlines. Randi posted a photo on her Facebook timeline showing the Zuckerberg family reacting to the launch of the Facebook application Poke (Facebook's copy of SnapChat ). To her surprise, the photo ended up on Twitter. Randi felt that her privacy had been violated and that standards of decency had been violated.
Randi, however, experienced what every user of the Facebook platform experiences: the privacy settings are opaque. Recently, Facebook has upgraded its privacy tools to make it even easier for the user. Expect Facebook’s Graph Search to surface things from the past that we would rather have kept hidden from the public eye.
Graph Search will remind people of their privacy settings in a way that may or may not be painful . People will then become more aware of the impact. The fact that data can be exposed in an unexpected way will ensure that people fill in their profiles better. And that users may even present themselves better than they actually are.
One of the three pillars of Facebook
Time will ultimately tell what the impact of Facebook's Graph Search will be. But the fact that Mark Zuckerberg has named the service as one of the social network's three pillars should give pause for thought. Has Google's search engine finally gained a formidable competitor? A competitor that can actually take Google's market share? And where is that Facebook phone ?