Facebook Delves Deeper Into Search. On Feb. 1, a few hours after Facebook declared its intention to raise $5 billion in what will likely be the largest initial public offering in tech history, Mark Zuckerberg gave close followers of his company a potential clue to its future. On his Facebook profile, he uploaded a photograph of his desk and a large sign that read in big red letters, “Stay focused & keep shipping.” Yet it was the adjacent MacBook laptop in the image that drew the most attention. Visible on the computer’s screen was a blurry image of a Facebook page and, at the top, what seemed to be an unusually elongated white box. Web pundits speculated the image showed a prototype of a new Facebook search engine. To date, Facebook hasn’t made search a priority, and it shows.
The prominent white box at the top of each page is good at helping users find other members. A photo on Zuckerberg's Facebook page shows a tweaked version of the site's search bar Still, the search opportunity may prove irresistible. Facebook vs. Google, Who Can Win Search? It’s a well-known fact that most people don’t get past page one of Google’s search results. This is why the company is doubling down on integrating a social layer into everything that it does. While algorithms can crawl the entire web to find relevant information, could the things that we share on Facebook become a better and more reliable data-set? According to a piece by Businessweek, Facebook has a team that is working on making search on the site better than it is right now: Searching the social network could get a lot better in the near future.
We know that Facebook and Google have one thing in common, they absolutely love data. Google’s approach to search As it appears now, even with the launch of Google+, Google scours the web for content and then churns it through an algorithm that decides which content is more relevant. This works really well because people view information differently, and there really is no such thing as natural language search.
Who wins?
Google vs Facebook. Analysis: Google v Facebook Is About . . . Fast versus Sticky - Which Strategy Will Win? Posted by Tom Foremski - October 4, 2010 Google's most important launch this year was its recent debut of Google Instant search which cuts user search time by as much as 40%. Google users are collectively saving 11 hours per second.
That means 11 hours per second being spent away from Google search. Google is betting it that if its users spend less time on search then it will make more money. This is a far different strategy from that of Facebook which wants to be the stickiest place on the Internet. Nielsen estimates that each month, an average US internet user spends around 2 hours on Google, and more than 7 hours on Facebook. It'll be interesting to see the latest Nielsen numbers following the launch of Google Instant Search. How is less time on your sites better than more? It seems very counter-intuitive. And it seems to be working. Facebook is very sticky yet its revenues are a fraction of Google's (as far as we can estimate since Facebook is a private company).
Big "I" versus little "i" Google Is From Mars and Facebook Is From Venus. One of the notable things about the question-and-answer site Quora is the quality of answers that are posted to interesting questions. One recent example is the in-depth response posted to the question: “Which is better to work for, Google or Facebook?” The answer comes from David Braginsky, who worked as a developer at Google for four years, then moved to Facebook, where he’s worked for three years.
His take? The search company is like graduate school, filled with big brains working on complicated problems, while the social network doesn’t think as much about the deep implications of things; it just does them. Braginsky says when it comes to culture, Google is more technically focused, in that staffers there “value working on hard problems, and doing them right… things are often done because they are technically hard or impressive [and] on most projects, the engineers make the calls.” At Facebook, however, the attitude is “something needs to be done, and people do it.
How Facebook Can Become Bigger In Five Years Than Google Is Today. Remember three years ago, when Microsoft paid a quarter-billion dollars for 1.6% of Facebook and the exclusive right to run banner ads across Facebook.com? Tell the truth, how many of you thought that was a killer business decision? I can’t say I did at the time. But as that deal is about to expire in 2011, Facebook’s status as a revenue juggernaut is rarely questioned any more.
In fact, I have been mulling over data from both companies, and I’m ready to declare in public my belief that Facebook will be bigger in five years than Google is right now, barring some drastic action or accident. Futhermore, Facebook will grow without needing to cut into Google’s core business of text ads, which are still 99% of Google’s profits. What do I mean by bigger? Facebook already has more page views than Google. Google’s 2010 revenues will be $28 billion, give or take a billion. Facebook has figured out its business model, and wants to keep it out of the public eye as long as possible. Games. Inbox.