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Charlene Li, an analyst at technology consulting company Forrester Research, thinks Facebook is a challenge to Google.Li says Facebook is a threat to Google because it could become the first site people go to, to search. Say you want information about a family vacation in Maui. Li says when you check Google, you could get long list of sites. When we tried, it was almost 200,000 hits long. "Versus I can go on Facebook. I can go and ask my friends, and people will write back to me, 'Oh, I've done things, and this is what I recommend. And knowing you and your kids, they would really like doing this.' So, the next time I do something very specific like that, chances are I’ll probably go to Facebook," she explains.Full Story [cbsnews.com]
Printable transcript [cbsnews.com]
So, what are your thoughts on the possibility of Facebook replacing search as we currently know it?
Oh, and what does this have to do with PHP? :)
Oh, and what does this have to do with PHP?
Facebook offers an interface to develop PHP applications that might deliver a full user experience. Consider your site and how important it may be to have an application developed that enhances your end-user experience.
I caught this story, thought of my development friends here in the PHP forum, and decided to find out what their thoughts were on the topic. As with any forum here at WebmasterWorld, anybody can join discussion at anytime, so I welcome your thoughts too :)
I just figured instead of putting the whole programming-specific bend on it, we could go for general discussion. Tech-talk is great, but most programming starts first with a little brainstorming session.
We are (for once) working on a personal very ambitious project that calls for social networking (sort of) but most of the action will be “for a fee”.
No question about user participation nowadays being major success factor.
I looked at Facebook dev application, could you precise if this is something that anyone could “grab” and dev on its own or is it to be linked to the main FB?
(I was not able to figure it out) in a similar way offered by some forums that allow a user to create their own moderated group within the main forum site.
>>I can go on Facebook. I can go and ask my friends, and people will write back to me
Versus- I can call my real friends, and if they're my real friends, I will know whether they've been to Maui. And I won't have to log on, or wait for a response...
Facebook won't challenge Google, and it certainly won't challenge the phone as a means of getting information from friends.
People need to stop thinking about everything in terms of Google. Twitter was supposed to kill Google, Digg, reddit, MySpace, bah. Google is moving toward mobile, which is the right direction.
these are 2 totally different animals.
even if facebook makes it to the holiest of places (the default browser page) it still doesn't have billions of pages of information nor can it even fathom the idea of building an infrastructure similar to g.
That meant that Bill Gates valued Facebook at $15 billion, roughly the same as Ford or CBS.
$15 billion could build quite an infrastructure.
In a recent conversation with a friend we discussed search as it *used* to be. You could actually key a model or part number into a search engine and get what you were looking for quite quickly. Nowadays, you have to add the manufacturer or company name to try and get more specifics, otherwise you are inundated with "where to buy" sites instead.
Do you find yourself turning to other avenues then to find what you need? Perhaps asking a friend ... "hey, do you know where I can find such and such information?" I could see where a social networking site could be a platform that offers this service. I'm not saying it is a do-all, end-all, answer-all solution, but I do indeed see where it could be another way to find that for which I search, and possibly even find it faster.
I can go on Facebook. I can go and ask my friends, and people will write back to me, 'Oh, I've done things, and this is what I recommend. And knowing you and your kids, they would really like doing this...
My friends and i have been doing this for years already, through this little known technology called email. If they know me that well, we have each others email address, why go through facebook.
The ideas behind why people might use Facebook for search make sense.
Maybe for getting recommendations for services, stores, etc. (but again, what's wrong with plain old email, or even message forums?) But if i want to find out how to do something in Photoshop, get a recipe, or look up a song's lyrics, i'm not going to write friends and wait hours or days for one of them to write back, i'll look it up through a search engine and find the answer in minutes.
In a recent conversation with a friend we discussed search as it *used* to be. You could actually key a model or part number into a search engine and get what you were looking for quite quickly. Nowadays, you have to add the manufacturer or company name to try and get more specifics, otherwise you are inundated with "where to buy" sites instead.
I noticed that last year with Google, so i switched to another search engine and i get much better results. My pet theory is that the "make money from page views and ads" websites optimize their sites most aggressively and push down those sites that offer the real products and services. And the optimization is usually done specifically for Google (some of these still do well in other search engines but not as many). A savvy internet user will always use at least two different search engines to do their research.
