What Facebook needs? A killer search engine | Hacker News Reader

What Facebook needs? A killer search engine

paraschopra.com

10 pointsparaschopra21 comments

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.

He means web search.

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

That box searches the web. It even uses Bing.

I'm sorry but I still can't spot it. Tried searching for something and it returned my friends updates.

Even if it is there, I don't think there is as much emphasis/focus on this feature as there should be. I notice you work for Facebook so it will be great to hear from you what you think about focusing on web search as a central strategy.

http://www.facebook.com/search.php?q=foo

'Web Results' in the left hand column. I agree with you about emphasis/focus.

In the UK, I see the web results below the Facebook results, right at the bottom of the page. Almost impossible to notice.

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

This is a possibility, I'd have to ask around to see it is the case. If so, I apologize for the snarky tone in my first comment.

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.

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?

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

That would make the stalkers happy too.

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

Just saying™

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.

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.

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.

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