Initial thoughts on Facebook Graph search

I’ve been playing around with the new Graph search which i just got this afternoon.

First impressions – BEST “tour” I’ve ever seen in a product – instead of canned searches & results the TOUR uses logical elements from your Facebook profile and actual live results (in my case “University of Chicago” then “my friends who attended the University of Chicago”)

Second impressions – very cool but the auto completion vs actual search is frustrating – and will be MUCH more so when (if) they allow searching in blobs of texts (i.e. updates, shares, posts etc) – much that I would want to actually search for won’t be possible.

For example something like “friends who are hiring” which would be awesome to get reasonable results for isn’t currently feasible.

And more playing with the searches also shows a lot about who is/isn’t keeping their profiles active and up-to-date. Definitely increases the value/importance of keeping elements of your FB profile accurate (companies you work/worked at for example). They also don’t quite get that distinction – i.e. Dave McClure showed up in a simple search I did for “friends who work at Paypal” (note that my search was in the present tense – of course I know Dave used to work there… )

This will also be useful but will suffer from the “when/how” do I use this? Will Graph search be available to me via the FB apps? Or just the website? Will it be a standalone mobile app (ala Messenger) What more complex use cases will this have beyond the obvious friend stalking/local restaurant suggestions types of things.

Seth Blank’s YourTrove.com is still FAR more useful for me – that lets me search stuff that has been shared with me (full text search of posts) – i.e. insanely useful in tracking down stuff I know someone shared with me at some point in the past but which I can’t recall the precise details (for example the private, friend’s only post where a friend shared the names of his newborn children)

Overall definitely going to be an interesting shift in how Facebook is used.

Your Browser Alphabet

So a few days ago I came up with a fun yet revealing game – and asked folks on Twitter about it.

What is your browser alphabet?

That is, when you type a single letter what does your browser auto-complete to (if at all)? This may vary across the browsers you have installed and is, of course, based on your browsing and searching history in each of your browsers.

For me not every letter maps to a site and some more obscure letters map to sites I rarely use (but which are the only sites I use with any frequency that start with that letter). In my own case a few links, of sites I use the most, map to highly specific pages of a much much larger site. In most cases however the browser defaults to a fairly top level domain.

Safari (my secondary browser)

A is for accounts.google.com (yup, over Apple.com)

B is for bbc.co.uk

F is for Facebook.com

etc.

Browsers vary and a lot of this depends on what you have been visiting recently – but I think the full exercise can buy  revelation about what sites you actually spend the most time and may help you think about what you have been prioritizing. Sharing the full list almost certain reveals more of your self than most people would be comfortable sharing but I think it could easily be a very fun site/game to capture this info and compare it to others.

What are your get the New Year started rituals, habits or practices?

Do you do anything every first business day back from the new year break?

Do you try to get down to inbox zero for the new year?

Do you try to clear out RSS feeds, evaluate podcast subscriptions?

Try something new to start the year?

For me here are my goals and new habits for the new year.

1. Clear my inbox, currently hovering just under 2000 emails – going to try to get that down to <100 by the end of the week
2. Zero out my RSS feeds for the new year and likely unsubscribe from dozens (hundreds?) of feeds I rarely read last year – giving myself space for new subscriptions
3. Try to write a blog post (or more than one) and schedule others to get myself into the habit of at least one blog post a week for 2013 (so check back with me in 2014 to see if I make that – goal is at least 52 blog posts to http://slowbrand.com/ orhttps://shannonclark.wordpress.com/
4. Visit at least one new cafe or restaurant a week for 2013. Today I’m at The Wooly Pig on Hugo St in SF – a new cafe and a whole new street to me (haven’t been here before) Great food, good coffee, free wifi (in a tiny space) = a definite winner to start the new year. 
5. Reconnect with old friends and make new ones. Every year I meet 100’s of people, some years 1000’s, and while I always form new friendships each year I’m not always great about staying in touch with old friends. Not just via once a year birthday greetings here on Facebook but by actively engaging with my friends – catching up on the phone, meeting up in person. In 2013 I’m going to try to reconnect with at least one old friend each week – and meet at least one new person each week (whether they become friends isn’t the primary goal)