How Facebook Handles Questions Could Play Key Role in Future Search Habits

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Ever wondered how Facebook all fits into the world of search habits?  Looking for ways to use Facebook to improve your Internet presence?  Then please see our artice below.
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A WebProNews article

 

How Facebook Handles Questions Could Play Key Role in Future Search Habits
July 31, 2010
http://www.WebProNews.com

 

Will you use Facebook Questions to seek answers? Let us know.

 

 

 

How Facebook Handles Questions Could Play Key Role in Future Search Habits
Chris Crum | Staff Writer

 

Will Facebook Keep Data To Itself or Share with Search Engines?

 

Facebook's new Questions product, launched in beta earlier this week, has a great deal of potential for answering the questions of half a billion people (the most recent number of Facebook users reported by the company).

 

As competition between Facebook and Google over Internet user time and attention continues to increase, this may be yet another area where Facebook has a bit of leverage over the search giant. Q&A is becoming a big area of focus throughout the industry with many smaller players fighting for a piece of the pie (not that all of the players are small).
 Google has Aardvark, which it has yet to really do anything incredibly significant with (at least related to Google search). Yahoo, of course, has Yahoo Answers. Ask just reinvented itself with a focus on community and web-driven Q&A. That's just a few examples. Facebook has a major advantage, however, with that half a billion users, and the simple fact that many of those users spend a great deal of time using Facebook.

 

Facebook Questions data could be very useful to search engines and their users, if the product itself lives up to its own potential, but it remains to be seen if Facebook will be willing to share that information. The company is already notorious for being stingy with its data, from the open web perspective, despite its own "open" graph initiative.

 

Facebook told Search Engine Land that it doesn't have plans to give search engines access to its questions and answers, though they didn't rule out future consideration. The decision could be an important one strategically for the company in the future, particularly as Google continues to move toward trying to steal some of Facebook's thunder (the key word there being "trying"...I should mention this notion has been downplayed by the company).

 

Microsoft has to be pretty interested as well, as it is frequently looking for new ways to compete with Google and it already provides Facebook with its own web search results.

 

Q&A is becoming an increasingly interesting segment of the search industry, and one where there is distinct possibility of shaking up Google's share, thanks to an increasing number of players, the diversification of how people actually do their searching/information gathering, and blossoming mobile application ecosystems.

 

Facebook, Google, and increasingly Bing all have their places in these ecosystems, and Facebook Questions could conceivably play a powerful role in tipping x amount of searches in one direction or another.

 

Do you see Facebook Questions as a potential disruption to the search industry? Share your thoughts in the comments.

 

The Changing Search Landscape
 

 

Is Quality Really in Jeopardy Because of Content Farms?
Chris Crum | Staff Writer

 

Why More Content Farms Could Lead to Increased Quality

 

So-called content farms draw a lot of criticism for a supposed lack of quality and some consider them a threat to quality on the web in general. We're talking about entities like Demand Media, Associated Content, the new AOL, etc. (the definition of the term content farm itself is also debated).

 

I would argue that content quality is not in jeopardy. Hear me out. For one, while these sites may or may not produce a large amount of sub-par content, that's not to say that they don't have quality content too. There's no question that quantity is the driving force behind these sites, but quantity in content producers (AKA: the writers, video producers) also means a wider range of minds contributing. There is good among the bad. It's a mix.
 Furthermore, as competition among these content farms heats up (and you can bet that will increase), quality is going go play more of a role in setting one apart from the next. Low-quality content will inspire higher quality competition. If a how-to article on roofing isn't adequate, someone will want to trump it with a better one. Users will flock to the higher quality pieces when the lower quality ones don't meet their requirements. If those pieces do meet their requirements, how low quality are they really? Quality is in the eye of the beholder. If the reader/viewer doesn't like what they see, they'll look elsewhere.

 

Richard MacManus spoke with Howcast Chief Product Officer Sanjay Raman. Here's an excerpt from that article:

 

Who is the top YouTube provider, measured by views? You guessed it, Demand Media. This is because it produces far more video content per month than Howcast (Demand competes directly with Howcast with its property eHow). While Sanjay Raman didn't have exact figures, he estimated that Demand Media produces about 10 times more videos every month than Howcast. However he implied that this resulted in lower quality videos.

 

"Demand Media takes tasks and makes them smaller than they need to be," said Raman.
 He also claimed that Howcast's playbacks per video are higher than Demand Media's. Howcast averages 44-50,000 playbacks per video, he told me, whereas Demand is around 7,000 per video.

 

Case in point.

 

Now, that's also not to say that all of Demand Media's content is low quality, though many will be quick to tell you that it is. The company has already made moves this year aimed at increasing quality. See the following articles for a few examples:

 

- Demand Media Aims to Sort Out eHow Content Confusion

 

- Demand Media Adds New "Talent & Expert Network" to Content Mix

 

- MerchantCircle, Demand Media Provide New Local Search Opportunities

 

DM is still adjusting to a new model that it has become the poster child for. There may be a lot of work to do, and just how much it improves remains to be seen. That said, increased competition in this space is likely to fuel increased quality, and if not, the users will go elsewhere. Bounce rates will increase. Someone else will get the traffic.

 

Furthermore, search engines will continue to compete to deliver the best results, and people will be more inclined to share higher quality articles. That should provide further motivation.

 

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