What Facebook needs? A killer search engine

Let’s face it: many of us are addicted to Facebook. It has all our friends, apps, games, instant chat, groups and what not. In fact, for the younger generation, it is the first (and only website) they visit in a day. I know several people for whom the world revolves around Facebook. They don’t check email as often they check Facebook. And some don’t check email for weeks as all their communication needs are served by Facebook. However, even those people need to visit Google every now and then to search what they are looking for.

What if Facebook incorporates a search engine within its interface?

Now that would be killer feature. Facebook becomes your start page and you no longer need to go outside Facebook to do your search and the website truly consolidates all activities an average Internet user needs to do on day to day basis. Financially, it makes sense for Facebook to go the search engine route because in current form Facebook ads don’t perform that well for advertisers. That’s because currently users on Facebook are in socializing mood and thus don’t tend to click on ads and buy stuff. However, that will change with Facebook search engine because users will then be in search/buy mode and just like Google, Facebook can serve contextual ads.

I think Facebook has a decent chance in developing a better search engine than Google because it will be able to customize search results according to users likes and wants. Google doesn’t have as much insight into my personal life as Facebook has. If Facebook doesn’t want to develop a search engine from the scratch, may be it can license search technology from Bing and just customize search results for the user.

All in all, Facebook search engine looks like a killer idea to me. Is anyone at Facebook listening?

4 comments

  1. Paras,
    I’m a B.tech(Biotech), getting as a programmer in a consulting and IT company, and ultimately want to be an entrepreneur.

    Do you think I should go ahead with this job or go the unorthodox way and work here and there in small businesses and manufacturing units to get sufficient business experience to be able to open my own business one day ?

    please reply. I think I’m in a mess !!
    really confused..

  2. Well, facebook is already doing this in a way. When you type in a search query you get bing search results at the bottom. Obviously it’s not been marketed because it’s not integrated well. I think facebook will one day move into this market but it has to be done well to succeed.

    Also, bing search has integrated facebook’s social graph to make search more social. If you are looking for something and your friend has liked it it will get a better ranking than other results. I believe you are told what friend liked it.

Comments are closed.