Social Searching

It's pretty obvious now that Facebook is, for most people, their primary social network. The one they use most frequently to communicate with friends and family. So imagine what could happen if the worlds number 1 search engine and the worlds number 1 social media platform were to join together.

If you search for a car for instance, you want to find out how economical it is or how it drives, the possibility is that you can actually get a real world opinion from someone you know who might have purchased this very type of car. This then gives you an opportunity to contact that person and get advice from them.

Photo

The possibility of being able to see pictures of those that you are linked to on Facebook as part of your search. You are looking to book a holiday to Cyprus for example, you get results along with being offered to see pictures that a friend has tagged at that location. You may not have known they had been, but again you are given the opportunity to approach that friend or relative for some advice.

Video

What about video? People are posting more and more video's on Facebook, whether it be one's they have recorded, links to interesting examples or direct posting of content they have found on the web. So wouldn't it be great to see a relevant video posted by a friend for something that you are looking for. So, for the car example, a friend may have posted a video about that car and it may be positive or negative, how useful would that be to you?

At this moment in time, Google does not use this data in it's search results and there is no indication that it is on the way either, but with Google's main competition already on the move.....

Bing already uses Facebook data, but not to this level of detail. However, there are third party platforms looking for the way forward with this and they are further forward with it than the big search engines who appear to be slow in adapting to their user needs.

The point in all of this is that if Facebook were to take search more seriously, they have the content which if integrated could make search much more interesting and relevant. This is then, a potential threat to Google, particularly when Bing have already integrated the partnership and will no doubt continue to adapt the way it uses the content.

Watch this space, there are definately some interesting times ahead and the partnership's of some of the big names could mean a whole new way we choose from searching.