Star2, ThurSday 24 January 2013

ReWired

NIKI CHEONG

star2@thestar.com.my

Facebooks new feature

seeks to capitalise on its
vast repository of
information and our
increasing dependence on
search engines.

Living 11

In search of a bonanza

AST week, Facebook founder Mark

Zuckerberg announced the social networking sites latest feature, Graph
Search. The feature is currently in beta testing
by selected users, and basically allows you
to search within the walls of Facebook as
opposed to the whole World Wide Web, as
you can do with search sites like Google.
As usual, with any big new launch by the
popular site, critics have come out complaining about privacy issues. Reports have already
noted that Facebook, in anticipation of this
announcement, had done away with its previous feature which allowed users to opt out of
searches.
Something else is happening here, however. There seems to be more attention from
the tech media focussing on what this new
search feature holds for the future, and what
it means for companies like Google.
Graph Search relies on Facebooks existing features Likes, lists, tags and such to
provide answers to searches such as What
movies do my friends like or Photos from
Langkawi.
Comparisons to Google are inevitable and,
in many ways, justified. After all, it was the
search giant that attempted to take the first
hit when it introduced social search last
year through its Search Plus Your World,
which looks for the best answers within your
Google+ network.
One reason why it never really took off,
some analysts claim, is because Google+ as a
social network has nothing compared to the
vast data and information that Facebook has
collected over the years from its one billion
(and counting) users.
Rivalries and privacy issues aside, this
seems the natural direction for Facebook.
After all, since the emergence of the Web,
search has become an increasingly greater
part of the average Internet users life.
However, because this practice is so embedded, we often do not think about it except
when we deliberately visit a search site.
These days, we are constantly searching.
E-mail services and software all integrate
search capabilities so that we no longer have
to endlessly scroll to look for old e-mail.
We use bookmarking tools like Delicious or
note-taking systems like Evernote to digitise
our personal archives. We rely on hashtags
on services like Twitter to help us categorise and search based on topics. And the list
continues.
Sociologist Alexander Halavais, in his seminal book Search Engine Society, noted: In an
era in which knowledge is the only bankable
commodity, search engines own the exchange
floor.
Halavais book looks at search engines from
an academic and critical perspective, studying
the way they function as well as their impact
on culture, economics and politics. He speaks
of the way major players in the search industry might manage, manipulate and present
search results which some people believe
to be self-serving and also looks at the way
new platforms such as blogs might be disrupting this structure.
He wrote: The query and search strategy is
likely to change as more information becomes
available.
In short, Halavais saw all this coming.
And if he is right, and the trend appears to
be leaning in that direction, it is about time
that the general user takes a more distinct
interest in search not only in terms of
what these search engines (and now social
networks) can offer consumers but also in

Banking on
knowledge: Graph
Search, announced
by Facebook CEO
Mark Zuckerberg last
week, seems like the
natural direction for
the company to go
based on the huge
volume of
information amassed
by its one billion-plus
users.

Would you want a photo

with you looking silly,
for example, posted by
your friend on his or her
Facebook page for everyone
to see?
what way consumers are being turned into
commodities.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how people
are increasingly being shaped as commodities
on digital platforms, citing social networking
services like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
as examples.
The same is happening with companies
which specialise in search, and we must
constantly ask ourselves what kind of information we are putting out there, and what
personal data of ours these companies have
access to, among other questions.
With sharing becoming such a big part of
the culture that digital citizens have adopted,
we also need to remember what kind of information we are making accessible to others in
terms of our bookmarking, adding things to
our favourites, or categorising things into lists
which are publicly available.
The issue here isnt just about privacy and
access to data.
We also need to consider what responsibilities we have in putting out information in
the digital space. This responsibility comes in
many forms such as in dealing with misinformation (mistakes) and disinformation (deliberate inaccuracies).
Then we also need to think about what
kind of information about other people were
putting out there that might end up being
made publicly available. Would you want a
photo with you looking silly, for example,
posted by your friend on his or her Facebook
page for everyone to see?
Then there is also the whole culture of
contributing to this repository of knowledge
(namely, the Internet). Last week, I wrote
about how the late Internet activist Aaron
Swartz dedicated his life to ensuring that
information and data are available on the
Internet for free.
If we share that ideal, then we can also
contribute by making the things we put
online text, pictures, videos more easily
searchable through accurate metadata in the
form of captions, tagging and the like.
There is no denying that we now live in

a search-engine society. This is not a bad

thing and it has made life much easier for us.
Facebooks foray into this area looks set to
open up new possibilities (and spur others
to be equally innovative), which will benefit
users in general.
As it is with any society or community we

live in, the way we choose to operate in this

one is key.
n Niki Cheong is a writer, consultant and
speaker on media and digital culture. Connect
with him online at www.nikicheong.com or
on Twitter via @nikicheong.