Live data from Hacker News

Introducing Graph Search

facebook.com

151–160 of 266 posts

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#151

This is an important step for Facebook and I'm surprised no one has really mentioned it (all ~50 comments so far are about the graph search). The big thing here isn't graph search, or the fancy searching per se. The big thing here is this: > "and meet new people, too." This is huge. Huge! Facebook from the start was envisioned as a sort-of dating platform but that part of it got swept under the rug real quick. Throug…

Agree and w/o doubt FB will beyond just friend of a friend - e.g. not too long before they expose three or four degrees of separation?

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#152
post #143
post #120

They're going to have the same problem wolfram alpha has, since in the space of "all queries" only a tiny, tiny fraction of them are going to be ones that Facebook can resolve. Now, it might be less of a practical problem since the use cases for FB search are pretty clear and obvious, unlike W|A. But it doesn't sound like this is an open-ended search engine. Imagine typing say "shoes for sale on amazon" and getting "…

> tiny fraction of them are going to be ones that Facebook can resolve maybe the rest they are going to forward/proxy to Bing.

Didn't think of that! Would be a really smart move.

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#153
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't want friends of friends seeing stuff, why don't you just set your privacy to friend's only?

This doesn't actually help since your friends control a lot of your privacy. Remember when Mark's sister's photo ended up on Twitter? She had her privacy set to friend's only... It also doesn't prevent friends from tagging you in photos or signing you in places.

She tagged her sister and her sister's friend tweeted it. Not the same.

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#155

This is an important step for Facebook and I'm surprised no one has really mentioned it (all ~50 comments so far are about the graph search). The big thing here isn't graph search, or the fancy searching per se. The big thing here is this: > "and meet new people, too." This is huge. Huge! Facebook from the start was envisioned as a sort-of dating platform but that part of it got swept under the rug real quick. Throug…

"Siri, set me up on a Facebook Blind Date."

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#157

I'm curious as to the political implications of this, given social media's increasing presence in recent civil uprisings and government monitoring.

That ship already sailed. Facebook cooperates pretty extensively with law enforcement, so while they're announcing a nice, friendly consumer interface, law enforcement already has way more data than you'll have access to through this feature.

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#158
Facebook's intent is really obvious - they are trying to replace "raw" Internet with the Facebook layer, and people would do all interactions: social, searches, shopping through their layer. This would render other companies like Google, Yelp, you name it obsolete. The problem however is in the details: how can anyone trust Facebook with their private data, searches etc. considering all the privacy issues, lack of user's control over their data, etc.? Once you're in the Matrix, you cannot unplug. That's what Facebook is trying to bring to the users.

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#159

This is an important step for Facebook and I'm surprised no one has really mentioned it (all ~50 comments so far are about the graph search). The big thing here isn't graph search, or the fancy searching per se. The big thing here is this: > "and meet new people, too." This is huge. Huge! Facebook from the start was envisioned as a sort-of dating platform but that part of it got swept under the rug real quick. Throug…

> This is huge. Huge! Quite the opposite, in my opinion. People don't like being bothered by strangers on Facebook. It's weird and creepy, especially so when it's a guy contacting a girl. This could be seen as a disincentive to share if you don't want your face popping up on search results for people outside your immediate network. It also makes friends who are ignorant or careless about privacy more of a liability.…

This is exactly what I was thinking. I had about 5 seconds of thinking that this was very intriguing. But then I stopped thinking about it abstractly and imagined it in the context of my life. I just can't think of any situation where my desire to connect with a stranger would be stronger than my aversion to attempting to do so. I feel awkward, creepy, and a little unsafe just imagining it. And the feeling is multiplied when I imagine being on the other end.

Re: Introducing Graph Search

#160
I don't understand why people think this is going to be useful.

The inbuilt assumption is that people care enough about the data to want to search it frequently and thoroughly. I don't think that is true. Facebook is mostly ephemeral junk data that you don't care about; this has been true ever since they changed their UI to the Twitter-style "what are you thinking right now?" input / streaming.

In order for search to be useful they first have to backtrack heavily on what their entire platform is about. Which would be hard.

Post reply on HN