

What Facebook needs? A killer search engine - paraschopra
http://paraschopra.com/blog/personal/what-facebook-needs-a-killer-search-engine.htm

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indigoviolet
You know what would be cool? If the author went to www.facebook.com, found the
rather prominent input box on top called 'Search', and tried putting something
in it.

There's a lot that can be improved, but Facebook already has a search engine.
One that even produces Bing results, like the OP wants.

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paraschopra
I'm talking about searching the web, not my social network.

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indigoviolet
That box searches the web. It even uses Bing.

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zaidf
The Facebook-Bing deal _might_ be geo-targeted and not show up from India
where Paras is located.

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paraschopra
No, I spot it now. But I wonder how many people actually realize that you can
search the web from within Facebook. It almost looks like a side-feature while
I argue that it should be a central feature of Facebook.

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skbohra123
Interestingly enough, how you made a complete post without actually verifiying
the issue .

And as a side note, how do you manage to get all your posts hitting to HN
homepage?

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paraschopra
Yeah, agree I did not verify but it wasn't an obvious feature and I think my
argument is still valid -- Facebook could use search as its central strategy.

As far as HN homepage is concerned, I don't know ranking internals but I think
it is probably timezone issue -- as of writing this comment, the submission
has just 7 upvotes and is still on homepage.

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zazi
> Google doesn’t have as much insight into my personal life as Facebook has.

This is debatable. Off the top of my head, Google has my search history, gmail
(my facebook alerts get piped here as well), gtalk, google reader, calendar...
and the list goes on.

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aditya42
Absolute drivel.

In a year or so, when online music streaming becomes big (maybe) with Apple
and Google both competing in the sphere, will you want Facebook to add a music
streaming service as well?

How about a map service? Or an image or document format converter? People seem
to use those a lot too.

\----

Stepping away from the argument that Facebook is a direction-less fad that
probably will become irrelevant in the coming years, they're fine how they are
--- a big aggregator for your social activities on the web. There is no reason
for them to start moving towards a kitchen sink approach.

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dotcoma
buy blekko. and stick the search bow right on the homepage when you're not
logged in, and make it clear that if you search without logging in, you get
standard results, whereas if you search after you have logged in, you get
results tailored to your interests, the things you 'like', the stuff your
friends 'like' etc. It's a great opportunity because it is relatively easier
for Facebook to expand to search than it is for Google "to become social",
imho.

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lachyg
You know, I think they need a better internal search engine. Whenever I'm
looking for something on facebook, within my inner social circle (and
sometimes extended) I have a very hard time finding it. I think they could do
a better job at that.

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adrianN
That would make the stalkers happy too.

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kondro
Well… you know they're hiring all those Google engineers right?

Just saying™

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bvi
Not a good idea. I come to Facebook for one reason only - to see updates in my
social circle. Nothing else. I don't (want to) come to Facebook to search for
"consumer trends in the QSR industry". That's Google's job.

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apl
It's not about what you (or I) need. Sure, using both Google and Facebook is
fine. But Facebook might gain ground if they added (social?) search functions
to their offerings.

I don't necessarily agree with the author's assessment -- building a search
engine that competes with Google is a decidedly non-trivial project. Still, I
think you may be missing his point.

~~~
bvi
Oh, I get his point. It's just that his point doesn't make any sense from
Facebook's perspective as well. Facebook's essence is to be your one-stop
destination for _anything_ "social" in your life. They would not do well to
expand into generic search, since that's what most users associate Google
with, not Facebook.

