Facebook homes in on world of Google

Facebook is testing a new tool that encourages users to set the social networking site as their browser homepage. It's hardly an unusual move. But at a time when the company is rolling out its own email service and resisting efforts to loosen its grip on user data, the move serves as an apt metaphor for Facebook's sweeping …

[Anonymous Coward]

Algorithim based on likes

Oh dear. At least page rank has some scientific basis. It also presupposes that people like academic papers impartially, but then hell "everyone likes wikipedia" which seems to be a driving force behind the search algorithm at google for the last few years.

[quote]

Most industries are going to be rethought to be social and designed around people,Most industries are going to be rethought to be social and designed around people,

[/quote]

[scream at the soundbite] Ironic that it was made by an anti-social.

The cotton industry was based around people, [discuss] Whether it be the slave trade or the charitable foundations/ Christian based social housing experiments for the poor in Lancashire during the industrial revolution.

[scream in general] I'm not a human resource, I'm a person, don't force me to be social. I'd prefer to be a number.

[Stuart Udall]

"the future of search is social"

No, the future is integration of these various functions, such as search, email, chat, and possibly some heavily filtered social media functions, into a single platform. And that platform is called the internet. Currently we see these functions performed by different sites and that is because the platform is not yet mature. Over the years various providers have attempted to provide the One True Portal, most notably Yahoo and Microsoft, and keep all the traffic inside their walled gardens, and sadly they are still trying. Eventually, open standards and protocols will overcome these obstacles, all these one-trick ponies will fade into the background and users will be able to pick and choose which providers supply which service via a common framework. This framework will be a shell running on the operating system of their device and will provide a suite of communication tools. A bit like Netscape Communicator.....

[semprance]

Er...

You can set multiple home pages for most browsers....

[Jerome 0]

Multiple?

What does that even mean? The home page is what I see when I first open my browser. If I have multiple home pages, what do I see when my browser opens? A random choice from the selection?

[Gordon Pryra]

Friends?

People never mention the fact that you actually need friends to be a part of any social group.

How many people on your facebook friends list are actually friends? And why would you trust their recommendations?

How long will anyone trust a search that is in some way affected by a loose confederation of anonymous internet social network profiles?

I brought twitter followers and face book friends to help game the systems and get increased presence for some blog articles. kind of preparing the way for what may happen in 5 years or so time. Social network systems are far easier to game than Google's algo and therefore not that useful.

[Jerome 0]

Friends

"How many people on your facebook friends list are actually friends?"

All of them. Why the hell else would I accept their friend requests?

[Charlie Clark]

I feel sick

"a human algorithm"

WTF is this guy on? And the noun for social is society.

[Code Monkey]

Not for me, bitch

The last thing I want to load on starting my browser is a gazillion photos and JavaScripts. I'll stick to good old blank page thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The future of search is social"

Yeah, if the only things you ever search for are "funny video" and "kerry katona". Those few who still ever want information on anything may find social meeja doesn't fit the bill.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly

a couple of weeks back I tried this- I needed to find out how to set a task's priority programatically (ideally in vb.net), so I put my status reflecting this.

Then when I got home I fired up the web browser. After 10 minutes of Googling I'd found a solution and was back at work.

Since then I've had a stack of responses on Facebook. "NERD!" "Why not use Java/C/LISP? It's blah de blah", "USE LINUX!" and "OMFGLOOKATTHISLOL!!!! www.bit.ly/clearlyabadlink".

[DZ-Jay]

Re: "The future of search is social"

Although I agree with you, the same case can be made against Web search in general.

-dZ.

[Adam Foxton]

Presumably it's Brian Solis?

I mean he can't possibly have a Brain if he thinks that Facebook is a better search algorithm than Google. Even in his own new-media terms he's so very, very wrong.

I have 77 friends on Facebook. Not the most, but unlike a lot of people I know them all. There are billions and billions of people with Web Pages either personal, interest-based or professional.

Now, unless my maths is wrong, "billions and billions" is a larger number than 77 by far. Even if I'm out by 99% it's still tens of thousands of times larger than my friends list on Facebook.

This, by my reckoning, means that Google is already more social than Facebook- I can impart knowledge to anyone interested by creating a web page and letting Google crawl it. I can gather that knowledge from hundreds of people using Google.

Google on the WWW: The Granddaddy of Social Networking sites. More users, more images, more useful.

[Smallbrainfield]

Not for me thanks

Facebook isn't the internet. It's somewhere to put all your contacts. And then forget about them.

[Rob Davis]

delicious.com - where search is already social and has the "human algorithm"

*social* bookmarking site delicious.com already provides user-rated content via tagging of web content addresses (URLs); popularity of an item is defined by the *humans* that use the same tags for the same content.

[JaitcH]

The difference between Google and Facebook is ...

Google has class and reliability and track record to prove it (and is trusted by governments) whereas FB lacks class and reliability (and is trusted by few).

[Anonymous Coward]

Homepage

I tried Facebook and Google in the search for web efficiency. But plumped for Redtube in the end.

[Gareth]

We're all self-perpetuating media nodes, now?

Nathan Barley was more prophetic than we thought...

[Jerome 0]

Likely to succeed

I can see Facebook succeeding in this. While Google is undeniably a more useful tool than Facebook, I can do everything I need to do at Google by typing a search term into my browser's toolbar and hitting enter. By contrast, I need to actually visit Facebook to use the service.

Personally my home page is going to stay "about:blank" for the foreseeable future, but I wouldn't be surprised if swathes of people accept Facebook's "kind" invitation to switch home page.