Facebook is introducing a new way of searching for content writing services in your social network. It is not currently available in the UK but is due to be rolled out across the US in the coming weeks. This new form of search for the social networking giant has been named ‘Graph Search’, which will allow you to create an overview of your social network by using a graph. This will provide a new means to search your contacts by their demographics and interests, which will also provide especially useful information for marketers or recruiters.
Social Recommendations
The idea of graph search is to reinvent traditional search by basing it on your social network. So if you search for a term like ‘content writing services’, you will see your friends who work in that profession. It will also prove useful for finding out what your network has liked. Search for a service like a hairdresser and you will see the names of salons or barbers that have been liked by your friends. Or you can simply search your social network with a query like ‘my friends who like wakeboarding’ to find out who might want to join you for a weekend wakeboarding.
Beyond Your Social Network
Facebook would like this service to go beyond your own private social network and help you to discover a new network based upon your location, interests or anything else that defines a Facebook profile. This could be useful when trying to make friends or discover services in a new city or for a variety of other reasons that you might want to reach out to new people. Recruiters could even use it to find people with certain interests and talents in the area.
Privacy
Of course there will be the usual concerns about privacy as there always is when Facebook introduces a new feature. Graph search will make you more discoverable to strangers should you have your privacy settings set to allow them to. Facebook has no interest in encouraging you to keep your settings as private as possible as more open networks will lead to a better experience with graph search.
What it means for content writing services
The service could change things a great deal for content writing services and marketers. Facebook is clearly taking steps to revolutionise search, but whether this will become a competitor to Google in the UK is unclear. Search results will be determined by what your friends think, and on the surface that does not seem to change much for content writing services.
How results will be displayed for the sort of queries that would be entered into Google will however be important for content marketers. If Facebook becomes the de facto place for users to search for things that they would normally search on Google it will be important for marketers to understand how the algorithms work. How would they be able to take advantage of it? Would it even change their normal social media practices that they currently use on social networks?
Perhaps for search results outside your social network, results could be based on content produced, making Facebook’s search similar in operation to Google, but with bonus higher rankings for things your friends like. Maybe location based services will become even more specific than simply searching the entire UK. It is unlikely much will change soon, but it is certainly something content writing services will be keeping an eye on.