So Facebook introduced a new search engine. It was all over the news a few weeks ago and so I signed up for the beta version. From the news coverage it was made out to be the equivalent of Facebook declaring war on Google in an attempt to win the search war. Well, let me tell you how much Facebook’s Open Graph Search sucks and it’s DOA in my book. This screenshot pretty much explains why:
I did a search for “Nepalese people in Phoenix, AZ”. With no results. You might think that is a strange search. My point exactly. But a little background. I am a Nepalese person living in the Phoenix, AZ area. A good chunk of the the Nepalese people living in Phoenix, Arizona are connected to me on Facebook. Not only that, a good chunk of my social network contacts comprises of Nepalese people. And what does Facebook return for this search? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero.
When I did click on the last entry, it pushed me to a web search. Really?
Quite a Google killer there!
And if you say I’m doing the search wrong. You miss the point. Search needs to be simple. I enter my query, hit enter and boom I get my results.
So there!
Quite a declaration of war on Google from Facebook. Not!
Next.