I may start using Facebook again

It has been a long time since the last time I spent much time on Facebook daily. It is true that many people use Facebook to update and spread the news, and sharing really good stuffs. Sadly, they only account for a few percent. The rest was not that inspirational. To me, Facebook was some kind of a stage where lonely souls expressed their feelings in order to attract attention from others. However, recently, there have been two “innovations” coming from Facebook that may change how we use Facebook and perhaps, the whole Internet world.

I will talk about the first innovation, also the more important one. It was the idea to collect fee when you send a message to an inbox of a complete stranger. The fee varies among $1 to $100 and depends on many factors such as how close you and the receiver are linked or how famous that person is. It may take up to $100 if you want to send Mark Zuckerberg a message. That idea seems stupid because no one would pay such a lot of money to send a message to another person while they can do it for free with e-mail? Facebook must be in very desperate need of money then. It is true that Facebook is facing some problems at the moment. However, such problems are not big enough for them to risk their reputation for a little money. If we look closely and carefully at the idea again, you may find it may shape how we use Internet and even get rid of e-mail. Normally, our e-mail receives mails from our friends, or the people we know, and from complete stranger, mostly advertising companies. The current Internet world has led to a fact that we may get tens of mails every day and most of them are annoyingly undesirable. Those unwanted mails usually come in bulk and are called “spam”. With the advance of technology nowadays, we have made great effort to reduce the spam. However, such move is never good enough. We still sometimes receive e-mails luring us into using some medicine and more badly, sometimes we have to check the whole spam box because we are afraid we may miss some important one. Here comes the solution: Facebook. Facebook’s new idea restricts people from spamning other people inbox. If you are not on the friend list of a particular person, you have to pay to send him a message. And unless it is some kind of important business, no one will pay to do that. That makes those advertising companies no longer able to send thousands of e-mails simultaneously. We are free from the fear of spam. However, not only do users benefit from that idea but Facebook also does. First, the money. Then, the users. If people want to send message with no charge, they have to get other people to use Facebook and be on their friend list. After months of slow growth, Facebook has finally found a new way to get users and to get their users more connected. Now that more people will recognize the new power of Facebook message, it will ring a bell to other companies. Currently, we are using Gtalk for chatting, iMessage for SMS, Skype for Video call, Gmail and Hotmail for mail. Now we have Facebook messenger which can do all these tasks. And the most crazy part is that not only is Facebook Messenger free but it also is better. I believe, in the not so far future when people get used to idea of using Facebook for everything, Facebook phone will appear and it may be the end of other companies.

Though the idea of collecting fee seems big and promising, it has not come to reality yet. There is another innovation from Facebook recently and it is very near to us now. I want to introduce to you the new search engine of Facebook: Graph Search. Again, Facebook would look stupid if it wants to compete with Google and, perhaps Bing, in the search battle field. Google has become a verb already. However, Facebook does stand a good chance of winning this game, at least among their users. Normally, we use Google to ask THE WORLD about everything. Now we can use Facebook to ask OUR FRIENDS AND THE WORLD about everything. It changes the way how you put those key words into the search field. With Facebook, you may ask and figure out “restaurants liked by friends living in my hometown” or “books read by friends who works at a bank”. It is true that you can still ask Google for such things. However, the answers may not be as satisfied as Facebook’s. So how are your Facebook’s answers different and event better than Google’s? It is because the Facebook’s answers come from your friends who are somehow not so different from you. In other words, the answer is personal. It aims directly at you. If the idea comes into practice, and it will do, it will make all the “Like” and “Checking” make sense because Facebook’s new search engine works according to that. That is one of many moves move from Facebook to make everything connected. There have been relationship pages and now the graph search. Now I can easily find photos of me and my girlfriend. More interestingly, if Facebook cannot show the result, it will show Bing’s links. It will make Facebook search not so different from Google because Bing is already a big competitor in the game. The only concern will be the privacy. But Facebook has already updated a new privacy policy to help user control their content better. I have to say that I am really looking forward to experiencing the Graph Search. And I believe most of us will spend some hours searching for weird things such as “friends like Justin Bieber and Nicky Minaj”.

In the battle among the Internet giants, there is hardly any bad move. There have been rumors about Facebook going down soon. However, such scenario will not come soon in the near future. Those two new innovations will not only help Facebok go father but also may shape the Internet world again.

Kz

Jan, 2013