Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Is Facebook's New 'Graph Search' Built For Users or Marketers?


It sounds exciting.  Truth be told, I AM excited.  Facebook announced its new feature today, Graph Search, that will make searching the site much more intuitive.  
With Graph Search, instead of just typing in a friend's name and getting their profile, you'll be able to type in things like "Who do I know in New York", or "Friends in LA who like tennis".

Cool, right?  This will be super helpful and I can already think of a bunch of applications for it.  But the idea has been getting quite a bit of skeptical feedback.  

Is this feature made for us, the end users, or to help Facebook sell more targeted advertising?

And if I let my eagerness to try it out calm down a bit (which I will have to do anyway, because right now you have to get on a waiting list to even try the beta test) then I can see the skeptic's point. 

Does this really just make Facebook a better search engine of our likes, hobbies and statistics so that marketers can better reach us with their paid advertising?

Only time, and getting to use the new tool, will tell how well it works and how useful it is.  For now I will remain the ever-hopeful optimist.  Bring it on Graph Search!

What do you think about Facebook's announcement?  Are you Team Graph Search or Team Skeptic??

Monday, January 7, 2013

Your Twitter Birthday



A baby's first steps, a teen's first kiss, a student's first day of college; life is filled with commemorative 'firsts'.  And the New Year is the perfect time to celebrate firsts! But my first day on Twitter is not one of the occurrences I had thought a lot about. 

Until now.

It's actually quite fun to look back at your Twitter-life and see how long you've been tweeting.  It made me remember signing up for Twitter, just to explore what all the hullabaloo was about.  Who knew it would become such a phenomenon and useful tool in social media and communication - especially for first reports on disasters or other events?  

This site is also useful for something other than just a trip down memory lane.  You can check out when other users' first day on Twitter was as well.

Has your company been Twitter savvy longer than your competitor?  Is the Twitter handle requesting to follow you a twitter-bot that was just created today?  Which of your friends is the real Twitter veteran?

My first Twitter birthday is June 3, 2008.  When's yours!?