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This is an important step for Facebook and I'm surprised no one has really mentioned it (all ~50 comments so far are about the graph search). The big thing her

This is an important step for Facebook and I'm surprised no one has really mentioned it (all ~50 comments so far are about the graph search). The big thing here isn't graph search, or the fancy searching per se. The big thing here is this: > "and meet new people, too." This is huge. Huge! Facebook from the start was envisioned as a sort-of dating platform but that part of it got swept under the rug real quick. Throughout Facebook's history meeting people with Facebook has been a slim thing. Typically it was always one way: Meet in real life -> Add on facebook. It's only a matter of time until Facebook tries to make it the other way around. It seems they're explicitly avoiding the "dating" route, which may or may not be wise (dating sides have some weird connotations among some groups of people). It looks like they've finally found their solution. The amazing thing here isn't Graph. It's that Facebook is going to change its paradigm so that meeting new people is a viable goal of going on Facebook. So eventually we'll be meeting people through Facebook, starting with meetup.com style interests. That's big.

shmerl 14y ago
That's where other social networks differ. On Diaspora for example one probably doesn't know anyone after joining, and you always meet new people. You follow interests, subjects and conversations, not your acquaintances from real life. So it may be "big" for Facebook, but it's routine for other networks.
- Le_SDT 14y ago
  It might be a routine for others but the big thing here is that facebook found a way to do it and there are a LOT of people already on facebook. That will then make facebook the biggest and most efficient site for this feature.
  - shmerl 14y ago
    Hashtags work for that quite successfully (in Twitter and Diaspora). I'm not sure how well will these graphs work in comparison, but it's better than nothing for Facebook.
trendspotter 14y ago
So far you can only search entities related to the friends of your friends. A journalist who was at the FB live event said.
- pault 14y ago
  For most people, friends of friends is a very large, semi-curated group of people.
  - trendspotter 14y ago
    The Facebook default sharing (just some timr ago, or still) is that share to your friends of friends. Or at least you could see the images of friends of friends.
alaskamiller 14y ago
First to replicate OKCupid's compatibility algorithm and automatically do it for Facebook profiles, throw it into a SoLoMo app, then charge $20 to hang out -- what the kids are calling it these days -- your top 5 compatible people and boom! You got a hit. Then watch it get copied. But it's okay, you'll get the last laugh in another few decades when having a Facebook profile is more powerful than having government issued identification and we're in a topsy turvy world where if the Facebook personality emitting/detecting jewel you have to wear around your neck would light up if someone else compatible is close by for you to mate with. At least you didn't contribute that to society.
- businessleads 14y ago
  Quick, someone grab facebookjewels.com
- flurie 14y ago
  What you describe sounds eerily like the äppärät from Super Sad True Love Story.
- somedayme 14y ago
  sounds just like letsdateapp.com
- fudged71 14y ago
  I like this idea http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2013/01/16/bing-fund-adds-matchmaking-startup-likebright-to-its-roster-noting-its-innovative-approach-to-online-dating/ http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2013/01/16/bing-fund-adds-ma...
daralthus 14y ago
So the only question is, how would you interact with those newly found people? Would people just message any stranger? I guess thats not the norm now.
- joshuahedlund 14y ago
  > Would people just message any stranger? If they want to, doesn't it cost $1 now? Maybe that's the whole idea...
zaidf 14y ago
I consider the "meet new people" a downgrade for facebook than an upgrade. I hope that is not a direction they pursue aggressively because it risks making facebook less relevant. One of the things that made facebook different is the expectation that you're somewhat creepy if you just go around friending random people. As a long time facebook user, I prefer it stay that way.
- alaskamiller 14y ago
  Just to play devil's advocate... creepiness is defined by the generation _after_ you. It's inherently defined, something creeps along, up, or around. So, really, what you think actually doesn't matter. It's what the 16 yo kids think is cool. And if they enjoy spending all afternoon after school going through Facebook profiles, well I guess so it goes.
  - zaidf 14y ago
    creepiness is defined by the generation _after_ you Source:)? I get the "hook" to lure people onto facebook may change from generation to generation but I wouldn't necessarily say the hook for a newer generation supersedes the needs of the existing generations. If that were the case, facebook would always be focued on building a product for 16-18 year olds. Clearly that hasn't been the case from their past history.
notahacker 14y ago
I have to say when I saw that part I immediately checked my privacy settings.
Irregardless 14y ago
> This is huge. Huge! Quite the opposite, in my opinion. People don't like being bothered by strangers on Facebook. It's weird and creepy, especially so when it's a guy contacting a girl. This could be seen as a disincentive to share if you don't want your face popping up on search results for people outside your immediate network. It also makes friends who are ignorant or careless about privacy more of a liability. If they tag you in something that's set to 'public', that thing could now be seen by far more strangers far more frequently. There's no good solution to this: You can harrass your friends about their tagging habits, waste countless hours un-tagging yourself every month, or delete your profile altogether. I could see it being useful if you could give it commands. Something like: "Invite all friends who like Game of Thrones to my Game of Thrones Event on Sunday at 8PM". Then again, that could just increase the amount of noise on Facebook and drive people away even faster.
- xk_id 14y ago
  I kindof get the feeling facebook conveys an autistic interpretation of human social interactions.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - aroman 14y ago
    At first I read that as altruistic, and I was going to agree. In fact, I think that's a more accurate statement than autistic... or perhaps just more optimistic.
  - mej10 14y ago
    "Autistic Social Software" http://www.danah.org/papers/Supernova2004.html http://www.danah.org/papers/Supernova2004.html Doesn't talk about FB, as it wasn't yet a dominant force yet.
- taligent 14y ago
  >Then again, that could just increase the amount of noise on Facebook and drive people away even faster. How is this any different to just creating an event normally ?
aleyan 14y ago
> "and meet new people, too." This really seems to harken back to facebook circa 2004. Every single comma separated phrase in interests section of your profile was a link that brought up all the other profiles with that phrase in your college network. I suppose some folks discovered each other this way, but it didn't seem very popular. No one cared when facebook disabled it.
- notahacker 14y ago
  Not to mention the ability to run checkbox-based searches across your university network based on a combination of gender "interested in" and "relationship status". Not sure it was lack of use that got that removed...
django34211 14y ago
There are tons of use cases for FB graph. I find it interesting that they also mentioned job recruiting as a use case. I think they are gonna try take market share from other social networks, such as Linkedin.
MehdiEG 14y ago
Completely agree on that. That's actually the very first Facebook feature that got me excited and that might make me go back to Facebook. This is also the obvious next step for social networks and one that quite a few startups (including ourselves) have been working on for the past couple of years under the "people discovery" banner. Can't wait to see this in action.
djhworld 14y ago
Isn't this just meetup.com but with the bonus of more "personalised" content tailored to your facebook profile? I'm trying to work out if this is a good idea or not. Do privacy settings still apply when you join a group?
acheron 14y ago
Let's see... new search: "Find [single] [females] with [poor self-esteem]". Jackpot!
rogerchucker 14y ago
Sorry but mimicking meetup.com is not a big thing. Very few people like to meet up with strangers regardless of similarities in hobbies/activities. This will cater to a niche crowd and that will be it. This is a great feature on Facebook but let's temper the excitement about its importance.
paborden 14y ago
Personally, I hope Facebook owns the online dating space in a decade. It's time for online dating to die. I've had enough of my little sister calling me up with horror stories, like the time a guy's first message was "what's the largest you've taken." No joke. A world where online dating takes place on Facebook (or Ark) will be a better place.
yonasb 14y ago
Great observation. When I clicked "Try a search" it pulled up people I am friends with who live in my city, but as I scrolled down I saw people I am not friends with included as well. Seems like the next logical step.
- businessleads 14y ago
  Uh. Hi. Facebook seems to think we should date. Wanna go out sometime?
gz5 14y ago
Agree and w/o doubt FB will beyond just friend of a friend - e.g. not too long before they expose three or four degrees of separation?
businessleads 14y ago
"Siri, set me up on a Facebook Blind Date."
drusenko 14y ago
Right now search for people that aren't in your friends-of-friends network is generally broken. When I try to find someone by name/school, name/city etc it returns that no-one exists. I suspect it's some kind of sharding issue and FB search right now isn't global. To that extent, this is a pretty big thing for them to pull off. I could certainly see it helping their growth if you are finally able to search for people in a more fine-grained way and connect with them. Some say this may be unwanted -- that's exactly why FB has been testing having people pay to send messages. They know this will be a problem and are searching for solutions.
pinaceae 14y ago
i seriously don't get it. myself and around me, people (early 30ies now) all use FB primarily to "stay in touch" with people that are not really close anymore. old colleagues from school, uni, whatever. co-workers? not so much, for that you have linkedin. so: 1., who exactly should i want to meet out of these people's connections? 2., as no one is using the like button, what exactly is it supposed to data mine? 3., why would i go to FB to search, if my browser automatically searches in google if i start typing in the URL bar? or the search box on iOS. social search? i want to know which restaurants are recommended by people with taste, not my friends. movie recommendations? i prefer ebert over the people i know. crowdsourcing is mob rule.
- hyperbovine 14y ago
  I agree, I can't even keep up with the handful of friends I've known in real life, for decades. Like I really want to make faux friends at web scale. That said, fb has never made sense to me except through the lens of millennial and boomer narcissism. Maybe they'll lap it up. (I am not intentionally exempting our generation but I've never quite gotten the same vibe as from those who came before and after us.)
- EwanToo 14y ago
  No one is using the like button? I assume you mean "No one is clicking the like button", but of course they are, and even when you don't click the like button Facebook still knows exactly which page you saw it on, and that gives them plenty of information to mine..
mapgrep 14y ago
>It seems they're explicitly avoiding the "dating" route Actually one of the examples shown today was a dating example, one of the Facebook managers who oversaw the product trying to set his wife's cousin up with someone: "friends of people I'm friends with who live in San Francisco and are from India" http://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+%22graph+search%22+%22from+india%22 http://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+%22graph+search%22+%...
awo 14y ago
> Meet in real life -> Add on facebook. This is facebook's core value prop though. To flip is would be fundamentally flip what facebook's good at - creating a deeper digital connection with ppl you meet in real life. Meeting ppl on facebook became weird and creepy when they became too open. It wasn't an issue so much when they were closed to college networks. They sacrificed privacy for growth. On the flipside, consider LinkedIn, where it's not considered creepy to reach out to a complete stranger (recruiters do it all the time). But b/c LinkedIn has a focus (careers) and has more privacy, this is acceptable in their ecosystem. Net net, I think the only way facebook can be about meeting new ppl and do it well is if they sacrifice openness. Otherwise the creepy factor will undermine success.
oboizt 14y ago
Many users have already been adding random people for the social games that have been going for a few years now. Like Farmville or Sorority Life. I know several people who ended up talking to some of those random "game friends" and ended up befriending them in real life. Granted, it hasn't been incredibly common or straight-forward.
clarky07 14y ago
Right, because meetup.com has a higher market cap than Google. Oh wait. Online dating is not the big thing when compared to online search.
loceng 14y ago
Though I don't trust Facebook.
samstave 14y ago
Dating Schmating. What a myopic view. Lets take myself, and 90% of the people I know - as real friends. They are all in relationships. You know what could be "Huge" - creating ad-hoc groups around interests. Imagine searching for people around you, within a definable degree of separation, that have the same interests where you can do activities. Meeting people yes - dating does NOT have to be the singular vector for such relationships, that will be a natural secondary. And as a secondary - remains less creepy.
capex 14y ago
Facebook is the place where I share personal things freely because I know its only my family and close friends. I don't let other people get in, and use LinkedIn or Twitter instead. Adding someone on facebook without knowing who the person really is? At least I am not sold.
fudged71 14y ago
There's a huge problem with this. For many people, it's creepy to "search out" and find you. Making an initial contact on the internet is a far bigger hurdle in a tight social network like facebook than it is in real life. For myself, Facebook Groups have actually already done a great deal to put me in a setting with a bunch of new people that I can relate to... and I have made friends that way. From group projects, to school groups, to interest groups. You get to know each other surprisingly well. Search requires initiative. Initiative is very uncool.

shmerl 14y ago

That's where other social networks differ. On Diaspora for example one probably doesn't know anyone after joining, and you always meet new people. You follow interests, subjects and conversations, not your acquaintances from real life. So it may be "big" for Facebook, but it's routine for other networks.

Le_SDT 14y ago
It might be a routine for others but the big thing here is that facebook found a way to do it and there are a LOT of people already on facebook. That will then make facebook the biggest and most efficient site for this feature.
- shmerl 14y ago
  Hashtags work for that quite successfully (in Twitter and Diaspora). I'm not sure how well will these graphs work in comparison, but it's better than nothing for Facebook.

trendspotter 14y ago

So far you can only search entities related to the friends of your friends. A journalist who was at the FB live event said.

pault 14y ago
For most people, friends of friends is a very large, semi-curated group of people.
- trendspotter 14y ago
  The Facebook default sharing (just some timr ago, or still) is that share to your friends of friends. Or at least you could see the images of friends of friends.

alaskamiller 14y ago

First to replicate OKCupid's compatibility algorithm and automatically do it for Facebook profiles, throw it into a SoLoMo app, then charge $20 to hang out -- what the kids are calling it these days -- your top 5 compatible people and boom! You got a hit. Then watch it get copied. But it's okay, you'll get the last laugh in another few decades when having a Facebook profile is more powerful than having government issued identification and we're in a topsy turvy world where if the Facebook personality emitting/detecting jewel you have to wear around your neck would light up if someone else compatible is close by for you to mate with. At least you didn't contribute that to society.

businessleads 14y ago
Quick, someone grab facebookjewels.com
flurie 14y ago
What you describe sounds eerily like the äppärät from Super Sad True Love Story.
somedayme 14y ago
sounds just like letsdateapp.com
fudged71 14y ago
I like this idea http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2013/01/16/bing-fund-adds-matchmaking-startup-likebright-to-its-roster-noting-its-innovative-approach-to-online-dating/ http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2013/01/16/bing-fund-adds-ma...

daralthus 14y ago

So the only question is, how would you interact with those newly found people? Would people just message any stranger? I guess thats not the norm now.

joshuahedlund 14y ago
> Would people just message any stranger? If they want to, doesn't it cost $1 now? Maybe that's the whole idea...

zaidf 14y ago

I consider the "meet new people" a downgrade for facebook than an upgrade. I hope that is not a direction they pursue aggressively because it risks making facebook less relevant. One of the things that made facebook different is the expectation that you're somewhat creepy if you just go around friending random people. As a long time facebook user, I prefer it stay that way.

alaskamiller 14y ago
Just to play devil's advocate... creepiness is defined by the generation _after_ you. It's inherently defined, something creeps along, up, or around. So, really, what you think actually doesn't matter. It's what the 16 yo kids think is cool. And if they enjoy spending all afternoon after school going through Facebook profiles, well I guess so it goes.
- zaidf 14y ago
  creepiness is defined by the generation _after_ you Source:)? I get the "hook" to lure people onto facebook may change from generation to generation but I wouldn't necessarily say the hook for a newer generation supersedes the needs of the existing generations. If that were the case, facebook would always be focued on building a product for 16-18 year olds. Clearly that hasn't been the case from their past history.

notahacker 14y ago

I have to say when I saw that part I immediately checked my privacy settings.

Irregardless 14y ago

> This is huge. Huge! Quite the opposite, in my opinion. People don't like being bothered by strangers on Facebook. It's weird and creepy, especially so when it's a guy contacting a girl. This could be seen as a disincentive to share if you don't want your face popping up on search results for people outside your immediate network. It also makes friends who are ignorant or careless about privacy more of a liability. If they tag you in something that's set to 'public', that thing could now be seen by far more strangers far more frequently. There's no good solution to this: You can harrass your friends about their tagging habits, waste countless hours un-tagging yourself every month, or delete your profile altogether. I could see it being useful if you could give it commands. Something like: "Invite all friends who like Game of Thrones to my Game of Thrones Event on Sunday at 8PM". Then again, that could just increase the amount of noise on Facebook and drive people away even faster.

xk_id 14y ago
I kindof get the feeling facebook conveys an autistic interpretation of human social interactions.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- aroman 14y ago
  At first I read that as altruistic, and I was going to agree. In fact, I think that's a more accurate statement than autistic... or perhaps just more optimistic.
- mej10 14y ago
  "Autistic Social Software" http://www.danah.org/papers/Supernova2004.html http://www.danah.org/papers/Supernova2004.html Doesn't talk about FB, as it wasn't yet a dominant force yet.
taligent 14y ago
>Then again, that could just increase the amount of noise on Facebook and drive people away even faster. How is this any different to just creating an event normally ?

aleyan 14y ago

> "and meet new people, too." This really seems to harken back to facebook circa 2004. Every single comma separated phrase in interests section of your profile was a link that brought up all the other profiles with that phrase in your college network. I suppose some folks discovered each other this way, but it didn't seem very popular. No one cared when facebook disabled it.

notahacker 14y ago
Not to mention the ability to run checkbox-based searches across your university network based on a combination of gender "interested in" and "relationship status". Not sure it was lack of use that got that removed...

django34211 14y ago

There are tons of use cases for FB graph. I find it interesting that they also mentioned job recruiting as a use case. I think they are gonna try take market share from other social networks, such as Linkedin.

MehdiEG 14y ago

Completely agree on that. That's actually the very first Facebook feature that got me excited and that might make me go back to Facebook. This is also the obvious next step for social networks and one that quite a few startups (including ourselves) have been working on for the past couple of years under the "people discovery" banner. Can't wait to see this in action.

djhworld 14y ago

Isn't this just meetup.com but with the bonus of more "personalised" content tailored to your facebook profile? I'm trying to work out if this is a good idea or not. Do privacy settings still apply when you join a group?

acheron 14y ago

Let's see... new search: "Find [single] [females] with [poor self-esteem]". Jackpot!

rogerchucker 14y ago

Sorry but mimicking meetup.com is not a big thing. Very few people like to meet up with strangers regardless of similarities in hobbies/activities. This will cater to a niche crowd and that will be it. This is a great feature on Facebook but let's temper the excitement about its importance.

paborden 14y ago

Personally, I hope Facebook owns the online dating space in a decade. It's time for online dating to die. I've had enough of my little sister calling me up with horror stories, like the time a guy's first message was "what's the largest you've taken." No joke. A world where online dating takes place on Facebook (or Ark) will be a better place.

yonasb 14y ago

Great observation. When I clicked "Try a search" it pulled up people I am friends with who live in my city, but as I scrolled down I saw people I am not friends with included as well. Seems like the next logical step.

businessleads 14y ago
Uh. Hi. Facebook seems to think we should date. Wanna go out sometime?

gz5 14y ago

Agree and w/o doubt FB will beyond just friend of a friend - e.g. not too long before they expose three or four degrees of separation?

businessleads 14y ago

"Siri, set me up on a Facebook Blind Date."

drusenko 14y ago

Right now search for people that aren't in your friends-of-friends network is generally broken. When I try to find someone by name/school, name/city etc it returns that no-one exists. I suspect it's some kind of sharding issue and FB search right now isn't global. To that extent, this is a pretty big thing for them to pull off. I could certainly see it helping their growth if you are finally able to search for people in a more fine-grained way and connect with them. Some say this may be unwanted -- that's exactly why FB has been testing having people pay to send messages. They know this will be a problem and are searching for solutions.

pinaceae 14y ago

i seriously don't get it. myself and around me, people (early 30ies now) all use FB primarily to "stay in touch" with people that are not really close anymore. old colleagues from school, uni, whatever. co-workers? not so much, for that you have linkedin. so: 1., who exactly should i want to meet out of these people's connections? 2., as no one is using the like button, what exactly is it supposed to data mine? 3., why would i go to FB to search, if my browser automatically searches in google if i start typing in the URL bar? or the search box on iOS. social search? i want to know which restaurants are recommended by people with taste, not my friends. movie recommendations? i prefer ebert over the people i know. crowdsourcing is mob rule.

hyperbovine 14y ago
I agree, I can't even keep up with the handful of friends I've known in real life, for decades. Like I really want to make faux friends at web scale. That said, fb has never made sense to me except through the lens of millennial and boomer narcissism. Maybe they'll lap it up. (I am not intentionally exempting our generation but I've never quite gotten the same vibe as from those who came before and after us.)
EwanToo 14y ago
No one is using the like button? I assume you mean "No one is clicking the like button", but of course they are, and even when you don't click the like button Facebook still knows exactly which page you saw it on, and that gives them plenty of information to mine..

mapgrep 14y ago

>It seems they're explicitly avoiding the "dating" route Actually one of the examples shown today was a dating example, one of the Facebook managers who oversaw the product trying to set his wife's cousin up with someone: "friends of people I'm friends with who live in San Francisco and are from India" http://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+%22graph+search%22+%22from+india%22 http://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+%22graph+search%22+%...

awo 14y ago

> Meet in real life -> Add on facebook. This is facebook's core value prop though. To flip is would be fundamentally flip what facebook's good at - creating a deeper digital connection with ppl you meet in real life. Meeting ppl on facebook became weird and creepy when they became too open. It wasn't an issue so much when they were closed to college networks. They sacrificed privacy for growth. On the flipside, consider LinkedIn, where it's not considered creepy to reach out to a complete stranger (recruiters do it all the time). But b/c LinkedIn has a focus (careers) and has more privacy, this is acceptable in their ecosystem. Net net, I think the only way facebook can be about meeting new ppl and do it well is if they sacrifice openness. Otherwise the creepy factor will undermine success.

oboizt 14y ago

Many users have already been adding random people for the social games that have been going for a few years now. Like Farmville or Sorority Life. I know several people who ended up talking to some of those random "game friends" and ended up befriending them in real life. Granted, it hasn't been incredibly common or straight-forward.

clarky07 14y ago

Right, because meetup.com has a higher market cap than Google. Oh wait. Online dating is not the big thing when compared to online search.

loceng 14y ago

Though I don't trust Facebook.

samstave 14y ago

Dating Schmating. What a myopic view. Lets take myself, and 90% of the people I know - as real friends. They are all in relationships. You know what could be "Huge" - creating ad-hoc groups around interests. Imagine searching for people around you, within a definable degree of separation, that have the same interests where you can do activities. Meeting people yes - dating does NOT have to be the singular vector for such relationships, that will be a natural secondary. And as a secondary - remains less creepy.

capex 14y ago

Facebook is the place where I share personal things freely because I know its only my family and close friends. I don't let other people get in, and use LinkedIn or Twitter instead. Adding someone on facebook without knowing who the person really is? At least I am not sold.

fudged71 14y ago

There's a huge problem with this. For many people, it's creepy to "search out" and find you. Making an initial contact on the internet is a far bigger hurdle in a tight social network like facebook than it is in real life. For myself, Facebook Groups have actually already done a great deal to put me in a setting with a bunch of new people that I can relate to... and I have made friends that way. From group projects, to school groups, to interest groups. You get to know each other surprisingly well. Search requires initiative. Initiative is very uncool.