The public may have given it a collective shrug and at least one analyst pronounced it ?not really a big deal,? but Facebook Inc.?s new tool that lets users perform in-depth searches taking advantage of everything their friends have ever shared with them could convince investors it is on the right track when it comes to advertising.
Dubbed Graph Search, the subject of the company?s big announcement Tuesday did not overwhelm market watchers, who expect it to have little near-term effect on revenue.
But as the company rolls it out in full ? it is still in a beta or testing mode and only available to a limited number of users ? the tool is likely to impress advertisers, said Brian Blau, research director in consumer technologies for research firm Gartner Inc.
?Users on Facebook haven?t had a way of asking for information,? he said, noting that you could browse the newsfeed or scroll through your friends? timelines but the search function was limited. ?Now all of a sudden there?s a major feature in Facebook ? with these directed searches. I think that?s a perfect fit for advertising because it?s what Google?s been doing through keyword, and Facebook didn?t have that notion before.?
That very fact formed the basis for Forrester Research Inc. interactive marketing analyst Nate Elliott?s criticism that the tool was not a big deal.
?The big news isn?t that Facebook has fixed its search tool; the big news is that it didn?t do this long ago,? he wrote in a blog post.
The big news isn?t that Facebook has fixed its search tool; the big news is that it didn?t do this long ago
Nonetheless, now that it is improving its search function, Mr. Blau said, ?advertisers are going to be thinking with the more detailed query they can better target their audience. All of a sudden they know who the individual is and what they?re searching for so they can have a better relationship with them.?
Offering a search that?s not just validated, but validated by your friends should be a powerful tool for the company, agreed Nigel Wallis, research director of application solutions at IDC Canada.
?The promise of some sort of legitimacy that?s offered by that means that I think you?ll see some really interesting results about 18 months from now,? he said.
With the soft launch of the new search tool, Facebook?s ad format has not changed, said Kate O?Neill, product marketing manager for Graph Search. The revamped search still allows advertisers to buy sponsored stories that connect with keywords and pop up as suggested searches, but there is no advertising in the search results themselves, she said in an interview.
?We?re really focused on just building out the best experience we possibly can for people who use Graph Search and think that when the product is as engaging or as good as it can be, then maybe we?ll turn to ads, but that?s just something that we don?t have any specific plans on now,? she said.
The new search is also not yet available on Facebook?s applications for mobile devices where the future of advertising is a key area of concern for its monetization efforts as more than 600 million of its billion users connect using tablets and smartphones.
However, Ms. O?Neill said, the company did use some of the technology built in developing Graph Search to power the recently released ?nearby? tab on its iOS and Android apps, which can alert you to places your friends have been.
?It is integrated that way and we really hope to do a lot more there in the future,? she said.
Facebook has been diving deeper into tailored advertising for some time, most recently through the launch of its advertising exchange, known as FBX, last summer.
Thierry Bazay, is the general manager of Canadian operations for the Exchange Lab, a trading service for real-time bidding placement of ads that works with one of the limited number of partners approved to buy ads through FBX and display targeted messages to users in the time it takes for the webpage to load.
He said the ad exchange, along with Facebook?s latest tool, suggest it is evolving to become more user-friendly to advertisers. ?They know they have this extremely valuable proposition which is the data of how people interact.?
For the same reason Graph Search could appeal to advertisers interested in targeting users based on ever-more specific information the social network knows about them, it raises a familiar and sensitive issue for the company.
?Privacy is Facebook?s Achilles heel, there?s just no question about that,? said Gartner?s Mr. Blau, adding that ever since Facebook tangled with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over charges that it deceived its customers about what information was public, the company has changed how it deals with the issue. (The charges were settled last year.)
Its announcement Tuesday emphasized that the search tool is ?privacy aware? and results would only include content that was specifically shared with the user or publicly available.
?You can certainly see that they?re going to great lengths to make sure the press communicates the fact that they?re paying attention to it,? Mr. Blau said.
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