Mark Zuckerberg says search feature which will eventually index all information on site is ‘just some really neat stuff’
Facebook has unveiled a new feature to allow users to sift through pictures, posts and messages in a way that the company’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, claimed could transform how people use the social network.
Unveiling the tool, Graph Search, at its first major product launch since the company’s IPO last May, Zuckerberg described it as the site’s “third pillar”, after Timeline and News Feed.
“Graph Search is a completely new way for people to get information on Facebook,” he told a packed press conference at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park on Tuesday.
The function will initially let users search four categories – people, places, photos, interests – and gradually expand to cover all content, Zuckerberg said.
“Graph Search is a really big project. Eventually… we want to index all the posts and all of the content on Facebook. I thought it couldn’t be done. This is just some really neat stuff. This is one of the coolest things we’ve done in a while.”
A limited rollout began immediately, with Zuckerberg stressing that Graph Search is a “beta” product which will expand slowly and be built on over the coming years, evolving in response to how people used it.
“Graph Search is designed to take a precise query and return to you the answer,” he said, “not links to other places that might take you to the answer.”
Lars Rasmussen, a former Google executive who is now one of Facebook’s top engineers, cited as an example a search for a spicy meal in San Francisco. A search for “restaurants liked by my friends from India” revealed a long list. Narrowing that to “Indian restaurants liked by my friends from India” yielded another list. Then he searched for restaurants in San Francisco liked by Culinary Institute of America graduates.
In cases where Graph Search comes up blank – which is likely to be a frequent occurrence in its infancy – the service defaults to the web search engine Bing, which is run by Google’s rival Microsoft.
Industry analysts have long waited for Facebook to develop new ways to tap its lucrative mountains of data. Its stock rose last week, in anticipation that the announcement would involve a search engine. Zuckerberg said talks with Google over a possible collaboration had broken down over Facebook’s insistence on greater privacy protection. He said the new service would not reveal additional information but instead collate and organise in new ways information to which users already had access.
He and fellow executives showed, however, how users could find a wealth of previously overlooked photos and posts and “likes”.
“I want to invite friends over for Game of Thrones,” he said, “but who among my friends likes Games of Thrones? Graph Search tells me.”
Graph Search also enables the user to search, for instance, for “photos of my friends taken in national parks” or “photos of my friends taken before 1990″. The latter revealed a gallery of Facebook employees as babies, prompting guffaws from assembled staff.
Tom Stocky, another Google import, showed what appeared to be a market researchers’ dream tool: the new feature allows users to ask, for instance, what TV shows are most liked by doctors (Grey’s Anatomy, House, The Doctors), or software engineers (Big Bang Theory).
A search for music liked by those who like Mitt Romney revealed Johnny Cash. Obama-likers liked Michael Jackson.
The tool could help Facebook wean users away from Google, Linked-in and dating sites, but Zuckerberg said the priority for now was improving existing customers’ experience, with business applications to be considered later. There is no timetable for when Graph Search will be available on mobile.
“This is a really big project,” Zuckerberg said. “It will take years and years to map the whole index of the graph.”
His downplaying of immediate revenue sources dented markets’ exuberance: shares dippled 1.5% to $30.46 immediately following the announcement.
Brian Blau, who tracks social media for the tech research firm Gartner, said the service offered a brand new way for users to experience Facebook. Confined to Facebook’s eco-system, the service was not an immediate threat to Google but would gradually increase in importance, he said. “In the future, you know Facebook will figure out how to monetize this. It’s going to change the way people think about search.”
The respected news site TechCrunch gave Graph Search a thumbs-up and said investors who considered the announcement an anti-climax – prompting a dip in Facebook’s share price – had missed the point.
“What’s interesting is that Facebook does not shy away from introducing radical changes to its products,” the site said. “As always, it focuses on what’s best for the user and will stand behind an innovation if it believes that it will improve the user experience.”
Investors, in contrast, liked conservative choices, security and stability, said TechCrunch. “That’s why they should adapt to Facebook’s way of doing things if they want to understand the company’s long-term perspective, because Graph Search is clearly an important move for Facebook.”
Posted by admin | Posted on 01-12-2012
Category : Business
Tags: court, dominance, europe, ftc, internet, news, proceedings, regulators, results, rivals, search, user
Europe and US regulators to deliberate on whether to take the company to court over its dominance of internet search
The antitrust regulators for Europe and the US, Joaquín Almunia and Jonathan Leibowitz, will meet on Monday for a discussion that could be crucial for Google’s future as they deliberate on whether to settle with the technology company or take it to court over its dominance of internet search.
Both the European Commission and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have been investigating Google for more than 18 months as they try to decide what action to take over its apparent monopoly in search and search-related advertising on opposite sides of the Atlantic.
Almunia and Leibowitz are understood to be close to separate decisions on what action to take – though some think the EC is ready to be more aggressive than the FTC, which has come under political pressure in the US to go easy on what rivals to Google say are market distortions.
If both regulators act against it, Google would almost certainly be forced to yield to demands to modify how it shows search results so that it does not favour its own services over rivals’.
The FTC confirmed that Leibowitz is in Europe but declined to give any details of his meetings or agenda.
Google has been criticised by competitors, including Microsoft, over its use of its dominance in search to push its own services such as Google Shopping over competing services in search results. Google has said that it is responding to user demand, and that rivals are just a click away.
In October Google suggested to Almunia that it could label its in-house search results, such as maps, stock prices and videos, to make clear that it had chosen them. But the EC appears not to have accepted that.
A key difference between the two regulators is the scale of Google’s position in their relative markets. In Europe, Google gets about 90% of search queries; in the US, it is 65%.
Almunia has made a number of speeches since the summer criticising Google for slow movement in negotiations that opened in July, after the EC published a list of four areas where it felt Google’s dominance could amount to an abuse of monopoly. Besides search results, they include the use of other sites’ content in short search results, portability of advertising campaigns, and rivals’ ability to advertise alongside Google on outside pages.
In September Almunia warned Google publicly that “in the absence of satisfactory proposals [from Google] in the short term, I will be obliged to continue with our formal proceedings.”
That could mean a move to court proceedings which might end with Google being fined up to 10% of its worldwide revenues, which for 2011 would amount to €2.9bn (£2.3bn).
The FTC, though, has looked less certain. FTC staff recommended to the five commissioners led by Leibowitz that the agency should act against Google, and force some sort of change in its representation of search. The commissioners have to decide by a majority what action to take. In recent days sources from the FTC have suggested that it will reach a settlement with Google that would effectively bind it to specific behaviour.
The FTC has previously reached settlements with Google over privacy, following the calamitous launch of its Buzz network – which let other people see users’ contacts – and then when Google worked around privacy protections on Apple’s Safari browser to plant cookies on web users’ systems against their wishes. A fine of $25m for the latter was recently upheld by a judge in the US, though consumer advocates had been saying it should be higher. Google had accepted the fine but did not concede that it had broken the law.
Posted by admin | Posted on 03-10-2012
Category : Stocks
Tags: acquired, corp, data, marketwire, oct, otcqb:acdu, patent, previously, remaining, speaks, today, transmitted, user, voice
PHILADELPHIA, PA–(Marketwire – Oct 3, 2012) – Accredited Transcription Corp. previously acquired 66.6% ownership of United States Patent 6,298,328. Today, ATC announced that it acquired the remaining 33.4% of the patent. The invention consists of an off-site transcription system whereby the user speaks and the voice is transmitted to an off-site data site and converted into text.
The rest is here: Accredited Transcription Corp. Acquires 100% of Patent for Off-Site Transcription Service
