Is Facebook on a mission to improve user experience, or on a quest to validate every privacy concern your kid’s school counselor warned you about? On Jan. 16^th, 2013, Mark Zuckerberg introduced the Facebook Social Graph Search, and to many appears to have taken an early lead in driving a dangerous trend.

 ”Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”

-Ayn Rand

That may sounds like a rash generalization (I don’t normally jump straight to the Ayn Rand quotes when I’m researching things), but Zuckerberg’s take may actually validate this when he talks about what he believes people care about:

“A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.”

-Mark Zuckerberg

What Is Facebook Graph Search?

Facebook’s “Social Graph Search” will allow users to search the Facebook user database for individuals, brands and content based on data points such as:

• Interests
• Photos
• Places visited
• Likes
• Physical location
• Etc.

At this point, the Facebook Social Graph Search won’t search status updates, but it’s no doubt in the long term plan, if you take Mark’s word on it:

“Our goal is not to build a platform; it’s to be across all of them.”

-Mark Zuckerberg

To Search or To Facebook Graph Search?

In addition to this change, which is aimed at encouraging users to stay longer on the Facebook website, integration with Bing appears to have deepened, judging by their beta and Bing recently adding 5x more social data into their search sidebar. When results are not found within your network or shared publicly, the ‘fallback’ is for Facebook to display relevant results through their search partner, Bing. Inevitably, some users will begin searching for general information through the Facebook search bar as they become conditioned to search within the platform, which I’m willing to be Zuckerberg wouldn’t be upset about.

With any new Facebook change there’s a period of necessary trial and error, but if the beta test proves to be a working platform, Zuckerberg may have finally found a way to liven up the network’s current (and pretty useless) search bar. By integrating a more natural search, Facebook can entice more people to spend more time on the site, which already dominates a lot of Internet time as it is, thereby encouraging investors and the stock market gnomes that Facebook isn’t a waste of time after all.

Whether this search enhances the status of social media civilization or demolishes it is up to be seen, as Facebook has made very clear that privacy issues were taken into consideration from the very beginning.

What Does Graph Search Mean for Marketers?

Right off the bat, Facebook profile, page and picture optimization, as well as optimization of websites for Bing spiders just became a top priority. This implies a growing need for leveraging metrics available from Microsoft and Facebook revolving rankings, profile ‘completeness’, network size, and respective rankings in results. It also means a need to go back in a start labeling and taggin all photos and video content with locations, company, and people names in order for them to show up in the new search.

For example, if someone uses the new Graph Search to find “Friends who went to the ISM Holiday Mixer” it won’t do any good unless all of those videos and pictures are tagged with that particular event, the ISM brand and the people in those photos are tagged correctly. It’s adds a few more steps into the mix when it comes to (and I hesitate to use this term, but what the heck) Facebook SEO, but those steps are now glaringly necessary.

Aside from just making Facebook changes, if you’re not using Bing’s Webmaster tool set yet, you probably want to set that up immediately considering all Facebook default searches will now run through Bing.

The Bigger Search Picture

All in all, these changes speak to a greater message many of us have anticipated and preached for years: social media’s growing importance in search. While we don’t believe Facebook’s Graph Search is a complete ‘game changer’, we do believe that it will likely drive more search equity towards FB/Bing and we would be remiss if we didn’t step up and be well-prepared and positioned to take advantage of whatever shifts come over the next few years.

As marketers, it is our job to stay on top of updates and announcements like this and while concrete data and extrapolations can’t materialize until widespread release of Graph Search, it appears at this point Facebook may be extending it’s hand into a profitable and influential arena. Whether or not Facebook users or the general public feel privacy is going out of the window, this new land of search is here to stay.

What do you think of Facebook’s Graph Search? Do you think it’s a “game changer” or just another addition to the network people will ignore to watch cat videos?

Thoughts?

Let me apologize in advance for the transcript’s front and end missing. I will be sure to update when it becomes available, but was limited to the failures of the FTC live stream. The core message is 100% in-tact, from the intro to the last statement prior to questions…

…OTHER PARTIES, INTERVIEWED NUMEROUS INDUSTRY PARTICIPANTS AND TOOK SWORN TESTIMONY OF KEY GOOGLE EXECUTIVES.

“There are two aspects to the settlement we announced today. The first involves Google’s misuse of patent protection to prevent competition. We stopped that abuse. The second concerns allegations that Google unfairly biases its search results. We closed this investigation finding the evidence does not support a claim that Google’s prominent display of its own content on its general search page was undertaken without legitimate justification. We do accept Google’s legally binding commitments to stop the most problematic business practices relating to search in search advertising. This also comes with monitoring obligations as well.

Let me start with the patent issue. By a 4-1 vote, a bipartisan majority of the commission orders Google to stop seeking to exclude competitors using standard essential patents that Motorola, which Google purchased, had first promised but refused to license unfair and reasonable terms. These essential patents and others like them are the cornerstone of the system of interopen — interoperability standards that we have taken for granted. Over half of American consumers own and use one of these devices, including iPhones, Android phones and Xboxes. Today’s action by the commission ensures that competition ensures to work for the benefit of American consumers in these important markets.

Now, years ago Motorola promised to license its patents essential to these interoperability patents on fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms. Those are called fran terms, to any interested manufacturer. Other companies took Motorola at its word. Over many years relying on this promise, they invested billions and probably tens of billions of dollars in developing and bringing products to consumers using these patents. Rather than offering a license or the license it promised, Motorola changed the rules of the game. The company sought injunctions and exclusion orders to prevent the devices from coming into the country against products using their patents. After Google purchased Motorola, it inherited this litigation and continued the same practices. Google’s un-fair conduct threatened  laptop and tablet computers and smart phone and gaming systems or it could have increased the cost of these products by requiring manufacturers to pay higher licensing fees which then would have been passed onto consumers.

Here’s an example of one product issue in the case. It’s an iPad. I happened to have an older one. There are a number of other devices, xboxes, government-issued Research in Motion smart phones, that are all under threat if this practice had been allowed to continue and grow. Google’s settlement with the commission requires to Google to abandon their claim for relief on any essential patents with a fran commitment and offer a license on fran terms to any company that wants to license these patents in the future.

Today’s landmark enforcement action will become, we hope, a template for resolution of SEP licensing disputes across many industries and builds on more than 15 years of bipartisan work in the Federal Trade Commission from patent reports, to workshops, to enforcement actions like this one aimed at protecting the integrity of the patent system and even more importantly, protecting American consumers. Today’s action makes clear the commitments to make patents available on reasonable terms matters and that companies cannot make these commitments when it suits them, and to have a patent included in one standard and behave differently later once the standard is in place makes those relying on it vulnerable to extortion. Today’s commitment action will relieve companies of hoarding patents for defensive purposes, savings we hope that can be invested in job creation, research, and development.

Before we turn to the commission’s investigation of Google’s search and search advertising practices, let me say a few words about the commission’s section 5 authority, which was the statutory basis for our challenge to Google’s unfair conduct.

When Congress created this agency in 1914, 99 years ago, it endowed the commission with a unique commission of broad jurisdiction and limited remedies. Our section 5 authority reaches beyond the antitrust laws to prohibit unfair methods of competition. In lies a pennumbra. We can impose fines. We don’t put malefactors in jail. Section 5 violations are not violations of the antitrust laws and are not a basis for subsequent follow-up private lawsuits for treble damages in Federal court. In a society that many believe is overly litigious, the judicial use of section 5 represents a practical way for the commission to bring problematic conduct to a halt.

In the second part of the action, Google committed to stopping the most troubling of its business practices related to Internet search into search advertising. Google will stop misappropriating or scraping the content of its rivals for use of its own specialized search results. Google will drop contractual restrictions that impair the ability of small businesses particularly to advertise on competing search advertising platforms. Google has made legally enforceable and binding commitments to resolve the commission’s concerns. These commitments have reporting requirements that will allow the commission to vigorously monitor and enforce compliance if necessary.

Let me talk in a little more detail about some of this conduct.

The commission investigated allegations that Google misappropriated without consent the content of rivals websites to improve its own products and pass this content off to consumer as if it were its own. For example, Google allegedly scraped the user-generated reviews of local restaurants displayed on yelp and led consumers to believe that they were its own. When some websites complained to Google about the practice, Google allegedly — and I say allegedly — threatened to remove them entirely from Google search results. Now, Congress created our commission almost 100 years ago to stop unfair business practices and I won’t seek to characterize Google’s behavior as conduct that is clearly problematic and potentially harmful to competition because it undermines incentives to innervate. That is why you would create a new site for restaurant reviews if someone else can take them and appropriate them as if they were their own.

Going forward, Google will allow websites the ability to opt out of Google local or product shopping without being penalized or demoting in its general search results on Google.com. That is it’s organic search. This arrangement should ensure that the Internet remains vibrant and competitive.

The commission also investigated whether Google unfairly restricted the ability of businesses to use tools to manage their advertising campaigns simultaneously on Google and on other competing advertising platforms. For example, Bing. This practice is known as multi-homing. Our investigation suggested that most large advertisers preferred to multi-home. Multi-homing by small advertising and small businesses affected by the Google restrictions was much less common. Some commissioners were concerned by the tendency of Google’s restrictions to raise the cost to small business and Google has committed to drop the restrictions on multi-homing. We think that will create a more competitive environment.

Many of Google’s critics, including many competitors, wanted the commission to go further in this investigation and regulate the intricacies of Google’s search engine algorithm. The commission exhaustively investigated allegations that Google unfairly manipulated search engine results to harm competitors, a practice that most of us refer to as search bias. Today the commission has voted to close this investigation unanimously. It can always, of course, reopen any investigation if it believes that a company, in this case Google, crosses the line with respect to our investigation. Although some evidence suggested that Google was trying to eliminate competition. Google’s primary reason for changing the look and feel of its search results to highlight its own products was to improve the user experience. Similarly changes to Google’s algorithm that had the effective demoting certain competing websites had connection, applausable connection, with improving Google search results, especially when competitors tried to gain Google’s algorithm in ways that benefitted those firms but not consumers looking for the best search results.

I remember an article from the New York Times maybe a year ago about J.C. Penney paying companies to do precisely this: not commenting on the value of seeing J.C. Penney advertisements ranked higher or lower in search results. Tellingly, Google’s search engine rivals engaged in many of the same product design choices that Google did, suggesting that this practice can benefit consumers.

Now, while not everything that Google did was beneficial on balance, we didn’t believe that the evidence supported an FTC challenge to this aspect of Google’s business under American law. As Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote more than 50 years ago and as the Federal courts have consistently ruled since, “the focus of our law is on protecting competition, not competitors.”

Google is unquestionably one of America’s great companies, innovative in fielding from its core search engine to varied ventures such as driverless cars. With today’s action by the FTC, Google can refocus on its business and its products, but with a clear understanding that it must do so while competing fairly. Now, some may believe the commission should have done more in this case perhaps because they’re locked in hand to hand combat with Google around the world or perhaps in a mistaken belief that criticizing us will influence the outcome in other jurisdictions. Some may believe we should have done less. I imagine Google is one that believes that. but for our part, at this very wonderful agency, we follow the facts where they lead  and apply statute faithfully. We do it with a vigor and appropriate restraint.

Today’s bipartisan commission action brings to an end the commission’s investigations of Google in a fashion calculated to brings our investigation to a close.”

What: You’ve been to BarCamp, you’ve been to Techville, you’ve been to Nashcocktail and you’re a valued member of the Nashville digital community (NAMA, PRSA, Digital Nashville, you name it) and this holiday industry party is for you! ISM will be hosting an Industry Collective Holiday Mixer on December 13, 2012 at Cabana in Hillsboro Village and we want to send 2012 out with a bang. Due to a private party beforehand and space being limited, reservations will be on a first come, first served basis for the first 150 people, but please feel free to use this courtesy RSVP page so we can keep an eye out for you*.

2013 will bring with it amazing change, but first we want to honor what a great year we all had as a marketing communications tech community in the greatest city in the world, so come prepared for good food, lots of drinks and great peeps on December 13. Come over after the NAMA event and get ready to embrace the change that will be 13.

Your first drink is on us!

Who: This is a gathering of companies, agencies, freelancers and all-around practitioners within the Nashville Digital Community who want to get together and throw a great party.

When: Doors open at 9 and space will be limited to the first 150 people.

About Industry Collective: Industry Collective is a group of Nashville-based creative, marketing, social media, technology and interactive professionals who come together to validate/shape/kill ideas amongst their peers and gather to strengthen the Nashville marketing communications technology community. The Collective was formed to make the connections necessary to produce great work.

*RSVP-ing does not guarantee a spot at the Industry Collective Holiday Mixer.

But painful, it was. The processes of identifying, documenting and melding the assortment of styles, philosophies and techniques was a massive undertaking. There are a thousand steps that occur from the first steps of scoping out a project to the last QA/QC steps before a site launches, ad goes out or social campaign gets going. Striking the balance between strategist’s approach and the technician’s mentality was perhaps the most crucial part of this. Too much of a focus on the elements that the strategist considers critical (high-level concepts) and not enough of the technician’s traits (the devil’s in the details) or visa versa would leave the work incomplete.

That’s why we defined everything. Not only to provide a smoother workflow, but to formalize the new ideas that allow us to fully flesh out our clients’ messages and key differentiators. The newly redefined discovery process arms us up front with the elements that used to be on our “if we’d only known this when we started” wish list. The restructured development process means we truly understand the end user and can build everything (aesthetic, functionality, messaging, interaction) with those personas always in focus.

As it we entered 2011, it was a year of process. Now well into 2012, we are clearly embarking on a year of progress. The growing pains of 2011 were necessary to build the foundation. Now it’s time to start building.

Other involved parties are rumored to include the associations NAMA, PRSA, NTC, Chamber of Commerce, IABC, AAF, and a few others.

For more information, keep tabs and pre-register at the Industry Collective Website