Consumer experiences drive enterprise user expectations. That’s become increasingly true over the last few years. Now Facebook is making a bid to provide the first fundamental change to how we experience Search since Google introduced the now-ubiquitous Simple White Page With An Empty Search Box.
Will Facebook’s latest innovation join the queue of consumer applications that change the expectations and behaviors of enterprise software users? Let’s take a look.
I’m really intrigued by the new user interface Facebook is rolling out as the “graph search”. Basically, it’s a much more visual way to display search results, using photos, associated icons and metadata to compile what looks like a much richer way to display search results.
Obviously, this is a far cry from the way Google and Bing display search results today. Even where mixed media are displayed in the results page, it still takes one extra click beyond the instant gratification provided by the type-ahead functionality now available on Facebook.
I haven’t used it enough yet to see just how powerful it is (or isn’t)– I don’t know how accurate the actual engine is or whether the best bets it provides are relevant. It’s definitely geared around people (Because it’s, well, Facebook. Duh.) but you can see where a similar enterprise application might be geared toward different types of content.
I can see more people getting used to type-ahead pulling up images, associations et cetera in the consumer space… and in social business, where the consumer space leads, the enterprise often follows.
