Major Announcement Regarding Facebook
Big Problem Solved By Facebook?
Mark Zuckerberg caused a great deal of conjecture by inviting bloggers and journalists to an important presentation yesterday. Some people thought that Facebook might be attempting to cash in on the mobile market by introducing a brand new smart-phone. Others suggested that the Facebook tech experts might have developed a brand new iPad app. In actual case the major social network is set to feature a new search facility, known as Graph Search.
The new tool will allow users to find tagged images and identify the types of content shared by their friends in quick time. In order to gain access to such results they will be required to type terms such as ‘friend’s cat videos’ or ‘family pictures of London’ into the search box. Results from Bing will show up if the relevant data can’t be found on Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg said that Graph Search ‘is the kind of product that we love to build at Facebook – it’s a big technology problem and it’s also a big social problem. It’s a kind of problem that Facebook and our culture are uniquely suited to build.’ However, the critics have pointed out that the search tool could be used to collect user data for advertising purposes.
Blekko Izik Search Engine For Tablets
Those of you who have considered search engines apart from the tried and trusted Google may well have come across Blekko. This well designed and user-friendly search tool makes use of slash tags to deliver the kinds of results that people actually want to see. For instance, you might type cats/humour into the search box for particularly amusing videos and images.
Realising that the search market extends beyond desktop users, Blekko have also released a tablet friendly search engine called Izik. In a recent blog post they announced that ‘our goal with Izik was to move the task-oriented search product we all use on our computers and turn it into a more fun, tablet-appropriate product … With Izik, we can use our state of the art technology to dynamically create context for any query in the results themselves, and use a tablet-friendly design to surface them in a fun and easily digestible manner.’
Google May Be Abusing Their Power
After a thorough investigation the US regulators recently came to the conclusion that Google were not making the most of their dominance by promoting own-brand products and services. However, the EU Competition Chief has taken a very different stance in claiming that ‘ they are monetising this kind of business, the strong position they have in the general search market…This is not only a dominant position, I think – I fear – there is an abuse of this dominant position.’ It will be interesting to see the actions that are taken to prevent unfair promotion of Google in the future.
