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Introducing Graph Search

facebook.com

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Re: Introducing Graph Search

#21

Post by alaskamiller »

This is pretty futuristic, it's SQL for non-techies that pulls from Facebook data. The most inquisitive, but not enough to be a programmer and deal with FQL and code, will find this really useful since they can finally make use of all the objects they've acted upon and entities they've acted with.

It makes Facebook data actually... purposeful.

The next step is still to match purpose with intent to make that money.

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#22

Post by karpathy »

Imo, this is a very smart move if the execution lives up. It gives an incentive to put up even more (structured) information to Facebook, such as Likes/people tags/etc., because now there is a more permanent point to it: it can be discovered by someone much later and become useful and interesting, as opposed to it being interesting merely up to a day on the News Feed and then disappearing forever somewhere deep in your timeline.

In other words, it makes building your profile feel additive and even useful.

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#23

Post by monkeyfacebag »

Graph Search seems like strange branding to me. I almost didn't click the link because I thought "Graph Search" was a new API and not a user-facing product (to be fair, the context was a posting on HN so I was predisposed to think API). Graph Search's real focus appears to be on the use of natural language and the presentation of/interaction with data. The "Graph" is almost the least interesting about it.

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#24

Post by jonknee »

DannyBee wrote: post #6
nkwiatek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People who live in Palo Alto who like Sushi who aren't my Grandma " It's the future

ITYM "People who live in Palo Alto who like Sushi who aren't my Grandma or my one friend bob who has horrible taste or oh crap that one guy fred who i accidentally friended or ..." I don't know anyone who has a very clean social graph that they can formulate sane preference queries about.

Indeed. Which is exactly why you're better served using a dataset that includes people you don't know (and ideally who aren't like you or else everyone will segment off into the same couple spots like middle school). The wisdom of crowds doesn't mean the wisdom of your rolodex.

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#25

Post by ryusage »

DannyBee wrote: post #6
nkwiatek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People who live in Palo Alto who like Sushi who aren't my Grandma " It's the future

ITYM "People who live in Palo Alto who like Sushi who aren't my Grandma or my one friend bob who has horrible taste or oh crap that one guy fred who i accidentally friended or ..." I don't know anyone who has a very clean social graph that they can formulate sane preference queries about.

I did at one point organize my FB friends into groups like Family, Close Friends, Acquaintances, Distant Friends, People I Know From That One Club, etc. If I were going to use this, I'd probably just filter it to use the Close Friends group. Or if I know I have similar taste to one or two friends, I'd just limit it to them. I dunno, I'm not sure how I feel about this yet, but I can certainly see some ways I could use it.

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#26

Post by prostoalex »

DannyBee wrote: post #6
nkwiatek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People who live in Palo Alto who like Sushi who aren't my Grandma " It's the future

ITYM "People who live in Palo Alto who like Sushi who aren't my Grandma or my one friend bob who has horrible taste or oh crap that one guy fred who i accidentally friended or ..." I don't know anyone who has a very clean social graph that they can formulate sane preference queries about.

How much information on sushi places in Palo Alto is your grandma pumping into the system to dominate that sector? Is she checking into multiple sushi places dozens of times a day? It's like supplementing every google query with -site:4chan.org on the off-chance a search for a camera lens spec or node.js tutorial would lead to 4chan.

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#27

Post by _pius »

DannyBee wrote: post #6
nkwiatek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People who live in Palo Alto who like Sushi who aren't my Grandma " It's the future

ITYM "People who live in Palo Alto who like Sushi who aren't my Grandma or my one friend bob who has horrible taste or oh crap that one guy fred who i accidentally friended or ..." I don't know anyone who has a very clean social graph that they can formulate sane preference queries about.

Facebook can solve this algorithmically without you needing to have a "clean social graph" or write complex queries to exclude your grandmother.

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#28

Post by jonknee »

aviswanathan wrote: post #18

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but if you watch the video on the bottom part of the page with Zuck, one of them explicitly says how this product competes with Google. Something about how if two people search for Apple on Google, they'll get the same results, but if they search Apple on FB Graph Search, they'll get personalized results. It's really interesting from a technology perspective the way that sea…

> one of them explicitly says how this product competes with Google. Something about how if two people search for Apple on Google, they'll get the same results, but if they search Apple on FB Graph Search, they'll get personalized results.

Except that's not true. Google personalizes results for users and also sometime integrates social aspects (through Google+).

If I search for pizza I see a map of pizza places close to me, their average reviews, links to find out more, photos, etc etc. I don't know if a Facebook friend once at a slice there, but I also don't care whatsoever and would rather not see it to be honest.

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#29

Post by togasystems »

Crazy.. I developed a Facebook Graph search about a year ago using FQL queries. It works very similarly to how Facebook implemented their Graph Search. I even put a voice recognizer on top of it. Glad to know that my crazy ideas aren't so crazy after all :)

Link to demo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=g...

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