Excited about Facebook's Graph Search? Maybe we shouldn't be!

A few weeks ago, Mark Zuckerberg introduced the concept of Facebook’s graph search to the world. Today, it is being widely talked about even as Facebook slowly rolls out the feature to its users. Even though this concept of a graph search could be called as the latest advancement to the conventional searches that exist today, search technology as such is still at its most primitive level for one reason – it is reactive. Reactive searches have been the way of search technology for the past so many decades now. Reactive search can be defined as the search that waits for a user’s input before using it’s algorithms to bring up the results. For years search engine giants like Google, Yahoo, Bing and others have tried to gain competitive advantage over the other by perfecting their respective algorithms to get better, faster results. But it is every competitor’s dream to develop a proactive search that works! Proactive search can be defined as a search that uses parameters other than the user’s physical key-strokes as input to bring up a reasonable set of results even before the user types anything.

I was in a speaker session with Patrick Riley, CEO of Ark, and in his opinion, Apple’s Siri is the most proactive search at our expense today. I think that is so sad because even Siri requires a voice command input. Search technology would have reached its pinnacle when there is no more need for us to perform a search. Imagine a scenario when a user merely thinks of something and search results instantly pop up on the screen! If and when that happens, the search engine companies would market it as a search engine that reads minds. But the technologist would consider it merely as a primitive advancement of the concept called Affective Computing.

The Affective Computing software is "based on the premise that an individual’s psychological symptoms can indicate his or her current affect". The most basic examples of existing affective computing systems are the heart rate monitor and the sleep pattern analyzer software. MIT is relentlessly working on accessories like rings and chain that could be a person’s 24-hour health monitor. They have also developed prototypes of systems that recognize changes in facial expression of consumers. A product like this could take a company’s customer satisfaction rates to a different level as the system observes, understands and adapts according to the consumer’s expression.

The botton-line is this - I see my friends so proud of themselves for being one of the few people to already have access to Facebook's graph search and all I can think of is the mind-blowing possibilities still waiting to be unearthed in the field of search technology. I look ahead and wait for the day when technology understands what I feel, what I need and when I need what I need. I know I don’t have to look too far ahead!