Facebook’s Graph Search – The good, the bad and the ads

Mark Zuckerberg took a page from Steve Jobs‘ playbook today, with a cryptic announcement that it would hold a press conference today at 10 a.m. PT. With Apple, however, we usually have an idea of what to expect – the next iPhone and/or iPad – though we may not know all the features.

Well, Facebook isn’t a hardware company, and no one really knew what to expect until Zuckerberg took the stage to talk about the three pillars of Facebook – Newsfeed, Timeline and… Graph Search. This is essentially an improved search function – which they needed. Before launching it, Facebook had to do a lot of legwork to ensure privacy and that users only receive results from people in their networks, whose information was already shared with them. This is differentf from web search in that it is insanely personal and relevant to you. Here are a few of the features:

• You can search anything within your Facebook network that was already public to you. This includes photos, places updates, what your friends like, etc. For photos, this is ranked by the most “Likes” they received.
• If you search for something specific, such as “soccer,” all of you friends who “Like” soccer are listed, ranked by who’s most important to you.
• You can search Places to see who of your friends have been to, for example, a new restaurant you’d like to try.
• Graph search auto-completes (like Google), so it will start to finish your query for you based on what it knows about you.
• You can search for “friends who live in Boston,” and it will show you a list of those friends, in case you want to visit (and why wouldn’t you?)
• Dating on Facebook? Okay, this part is creepy. As Emily Price of Mashable noted, you can search for something like “People named Chris who are friends with X” to find someone you met at a party. Oh, and you can search for things like “single women in Boston.” There is certainly a potential creep factor here, but we do have to remember that our networks are choosing to share all of this information.
• If Facebook can’t find the results, they show results from Bing, just adding more fuel to the fire between Google and Facebook.

What does this mean for users, brands and advertisers?

Ad monetization has been top of mind for Facebook for a long time, specifically mobile ad monetization. This may dramatically impact that –  just look at Google’s success with search advertisements for proof. Especially if they hone in on this for mobile searches and incorporate location and behavior targeting, this could turn things around for Facebook. Could, is the key word there – this isn’t a guarantee. If Facebook launches this thing well and can show positive search results, accuracy and that users are actually engaging in Graph Search, then Facebook could offer advertisers the opportunity to buy “ad words,” much like they buy Google ad words. Better yet, they could be locally relevant on mobile devices.

Privacy is top of everyone’s mind, as it should be. I guarantee people are flocking to their privacy settings to see what people will be able to search. They are concerned that people will see their information, and are guaranteed to freak out even though they are the ones who made this public in the first place. The big issue I see here is that you can search for something such as “friends of friends who are single.” I realize we decide if our friends’ friends can see our information, but that one is often overlooked because no one thought a query like this was possible. So my recommendation is that you should probably update that one, if you haven’t already.  Realistically though, all Facebook did was make it easier for you to find information that you already had access to, even if you didn’t know it.

Accuracy is also a concern, because people are not always telling the truth on their pages. For example, I put that I speak Gaelic on my Facebook page as a joke a while ago – I do not speak it other than a few choice words. Yes, slainte is one of them. That’s a small example though, of how I could inaccurately show up in someone’s search results.

Community managers are all in a Twitter tizzy about how excited they are about Graph Search so they can better connect with people on their pages, and to see who “Liked” what posts, etc. Also, anytime you search for something, such as a new hair salon, you can see what salons your friends liked. This is huge for brand pages, especially those that have a lot of Likes.

Personally, I welcome this update. Am I going to replace Google with Facebook? Of course not, and that’s not what it’s meant for. But Facebook’s search feature needed a major face list – pun intended. It has been a pain for some time now to search even your own timeline. Major events in my life and my friends lives have all been recorded in one way or another on this social networks since 2005, and I welcome a way to access that. Also, who’s opinion am I more likely to trust about a restaurant I want to check out – a stranger on Yelp, or a couple of my friends from high school?

What are your thoughts about Graph Search? Are you excited about it, or are you on you way to block all your information so it won’t appear in search results? Will this solve, or at least help, Facebook’s advertising problem?

Facebook 's Got 99 Problems, And Advertising's One

For those of us who pay attention to social media news, we’ve all heard it – Facebook needs to figure out its advertising platform or else their advertisers will jump ship, just as GM announced it was this week. This is bad for Facebook because it will lose the $10 million in advertising revenue GM spent with Facebook last year, but it’s far worse because of the publicity this move is generating in the media. GM executives didn’t achieve the ROI they expected from Facebook. If a well-known brand like GM is spending a ton of dough and not seeing consumer impact, it will prompt other companies to second guess how they spend their marketing dollars, too.

From a consumer’s perspective, one might think that it doesn’t affect me if advertisers are opting out of Facebook’s platform, except that I may see fewer ads. The issue though, is that much like a PR agency’s success relies on client revenue and making sure we deliver results, so does Facebook rely on its clients. Although we want to believe that we, as the consumers, are its clients – we’re not. That role belongs to the advertisers that pay the social network’s bills. And as Forrester Analyst Nate Elliot blogged this week, companies across several industries are deciding that Facebook isn’t the best place to spend their social marketing budgets, regardless of its massive user base. As Nate states, if Facebook paid as much attention to its advertisers as it did to enhancing the end-user experience, it may not be in this pickle, right on the eve of its IPO on Friday. 

Facebook’s Mobile Experience

Even if Facebook figured out its advertising problem on desktops, there are still major concerns regarding its mobile platform. I don’t even recall when the last time I saw an ad on my Facebook mobile app was, let alone what it was promoting. Of course, for me it has more to do with the fact that I rarely use my Facebook app, due to its incredibly slow load times that GigaOm’s Kevin C. Tofel addressed in a post this week. For those who do use it regularly, what’s the last ad you saw in the app? Did you engage with it – do you even remember what company or product it was for? I can’t stress enough how much of an issue this is for Facebook and its advertisers, considering that users spend more time accessing Facebook via mobile apps per month than by the traditional website. It seems that Facebook makes a new advertising announcement about how it’s enhancing its platform every six months. Well, the next announcement desperately needs to address its mobile marketing strategy, and it needs to be better than sponsored stories. 

A Fortune article on Thursday details how Facebook can collaborate better with Apple and Google, who manufacture the two most popular mobile operating systems. The article expresses concerns about Google integrating supposed Facebook competitor Google+ into its devices. Here’s why this doesn’t concern me – no one would care. It would probably get a lot attention from the tech press, some critics and some supporters. But this integration would follow in the footsteps of everything else in Google+’s short history: a lot of talk and no engagement. All these people would have Google+ easily accessible on their smart devices, but much like its 170 million users now, there would be little activity and engagement. Then again, maybe this mobile integration would prove me wrong and drive more usage out of its members. Google+ would still have to tackle the millions of mobile Apple consumers, and I don’t foresee Apple agreeing to Google+ integration on their devices. After all, they won’t even let me share a photo to Facebook directly from the iPhone photo app yet, which is incredibly frustrating, by the way.

Maybe Facebook’s IPO tomorrow will kick its mobile ad planning into high gear, since they’ll critically need to maintain current advertisers to remain profitable, as well as sign new ones. For now though, we’ll sit back and watch Zuckerberg fumble his TV interviews while the IPO hogs the tech media outlets tomorrow. Down the line, we’re hoping for big things from the Facebook mobile team. The number of Facebook end users is unparalleled to any other social network, so the advertising potential is there; it just needs to be capitalized on much better than it is currently. That's my PR thought for the day. 

A version of this post also appeared on prSPEAK, a blog by PAN Communications. 

Another Blog About Super Bowl Commercials: Mobile Versus Social

Are you sick of hearing reviews and trends about Super Bowl commercials yet? Apparently not, because you're here, reading this blog even after you checked out the title. I felt it was time to add my two cents. Prior to the the big event, I had my own thoughts about mobile's play in the Super Bowl. I agreed with experts who said it would be a huge factor, and that brands would use TV commercials to drive awareness of both their mobile and social campaigns. I thought we'd see some "Download the App," or "Visit our website" to view more. I didn't see that. I saw a few short messages to send texts and even fewer QR codes. I thought these would have a bigger play, even though I wasn't sure how effective they would be. Don't get me wrong - as I stated in my last post, I think QR codes can be very effective. But maybe not so much during commercials. Consumers have approximately 30 seconds to reach for their smartphone, find the scanning app - likely one out of many apps - open the app and then scan the code. The timing just might not be ideal.

What we did see this year, however, was a lot of brands driving awareness of their social channels, often with the use of hashtags. Audi cleverly played on the hot topic of vampires to engage consumers. The commercial was alright to start, but not my favorite - and that's coming from a reluctantly self-proclaimed Twilight fan. But what drove it home for me and made me laugh was the ending, driving the message home with the hashtag, #SoLongVampires. It's quick, witty, relevant and most importantly, easy to remember. That's the key for using hashtags.

If mobile and social were in a fight over who would get more attention from brands this Super Bowl, I'd say social beat mobile out. In my opinion, the reason is that brands had to outwardly choose to promote one or the other. It's clear that brands see social as a bigger priority to mobile right now, though I don't see that being the case next year. Though these brands outwardly promoted social channels, the majority of these consumers likely accessed these social brands via their mobile devices - since they likely didn't race to a desktop to Tweet about cars and vampires.

Brands need to stop thinking about mobile or social, and combine the two. Of course, we're seeing this in different industries, but often times there's a larger focus on social. Here's what needs to happen - brands need to think about how consumers access their brands (mobile, desktop) just as much as they think about where consumers access the brands (Website, Twitter, Facebook, etc.). Integrating them will be key, of course, but don't leave mobile in the dark. Mobile creates an opportunity for brands that we've never had before - the ability to deliver timely, relevant messages. Next Super Bowl, I'd like to see two things, and I think we will see at least one of them:

1. Better integration of mobile and social campaigns.

2. The Patriots defense learning how to block and tackle, leading to a Patriots championship. Did I mention I'm based in Boston and a die-hard Pats fan?

Next Super Bowl and throughout the year, there needs to be better integration with mobile and social channels. There shouldn't be two separate campaigns for brands - one for mobile and one for social. Today's average consumer isn't choosing one of the other, so why should brands? That's my PR thought for the day.