Facebook – De-Binged

Facebook shows the critical nature of optimised experiences.

• Facebook’s decision to remove Bing is very unlikely to be a sign that there is a new entrant coming to the search market.
• Facebook recently updated the Graph search tool that helps users find old posts and content from friends and has removed external search results that were powered by Bing.
• I suspect that this has more to do with the users getting confused between internal (Facebook) search results and those from the web rather than any sudden desire to run the searches itself.
• In order to keep revenues growing, Facebook needs to keep as much traffic within its own systems as possible.
• Directing users off its properties is effectively sending users away and in a number of instances, the information being sought is already present on Facebook.
• Many thousands of business and services use Facebook for marketing purposes and removing external searches substantially increases the chances of the user remaining within Facebook.
• I suspect that this also highlights that on mobile devices specific functions are best served by specific apps.
• Mixing up social networking and search on mobile results in a sub-optimal user experience and I suspect that most users prefer an app for each function.
• A great example of this is Facebook Messaging which was recently stripped out of the Facebook app and made into a standalone app.
• The result has been a huge increase in activity such that Facebook is now the No 2. instant message network just behind WhatsApp.
• Mobile devices are resource constrained when it comes to screen size, battery life and network bandwidth and capacity.
• This means that apps and services need to be highly optimised in order to work well and hold user’s attention.
• This essentially means one app. per function or service.
• For the ecosystem players to be successful , a suite of apps. is necessary to address each facet of Digital Life optimally.
• Both Google and Microsoft do this pretty well but others like Yahoo!, Amazon, Sony and Xiaomi have a very long way to go.
• I continue to like Microsoft, Google and Apple (in the short-term) as places to look for gaining exposure to the digital ecosystem.