The first in what I hope will become a series of intelligent blog posts, I’m excited to express aimlessly and to no specific audience my views on a wide range of topics from social networking, to digital advertising, running long distances and to who knows – fried chicken.

Graph Search

To mark this occasion, I thought it fitting that I resurface a great article from Ellis Hamburger on Facebook’s swanky new Graph Search. Here’s a quick synopsis:

• Graph Search while great in theory is hindered by practical matters:
  • Great for finding Photos & People.. not so good for other things
  • Based on ‘Likes’ – but there are no/few incentives to ‘like’ things
    • In an effort to encourage Brands to advertise, they discouraged users from inputting data
    • The more you like, the less social your newsfeed becomes (i.e. it becomes more branded)
    • Very low correlation between ‘liking’ something and actually liking something
  • Plenty of Friends ≠ plenty of data

Facebook’s not the place where you browse your friend’s experiences or where you share what you’re really interested in. Ellis sums it up with saying that Graph Search’s success will be defined by how much more people put into Facebook.

More for Less 

I’ll continue to check into my newsfeed and see what people are doing. I may ‘Like’ a page here and there but it’s unlikely I (and others for that mater) will be increasing my level of interaction or engaging more with Facebook (ignoring the fact that I’ve now started Notey). The reason is simple – branding and behavior modification:

Branding: What is Facebook to you? Is it where your family is? Your high school friends? Do you play games on it? Are you a FB creeper? Whatever it is to you – it’s going to stay that way. You will continue to use it as you have been and so will those around you. You are open, willing and interested in finding fun experiences and engaging with new products in different ways. As a startup, I’m always on my toes (and working and not sleeping and stressed out) but I take (some, though limited) solace in this psychological reality care of Al Ries and Jack Trout.

Behavior Modification: Have you ever tried to quit smoking? Lose weight? Get your kid to play piano? Behavior modification is a tricky thing and can only be done with small moves over a long period of time – and in the time it takes Facebook to modify our behaviors, there are many other places to go, people to meet and things to do.

Will you put more into Facebook or will you look for something else?