Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), is thinking BIG, with regards to the social networking giant’s search engine ambitions. The 28 year old billionaire wants something better than what Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and other search engines have been providing to users. Facebook ,which has announced it has reached the 1 billion milestone for monthly active users, and 600 million for the mobile platform, can indeed think big; after all, reaching one billion users is such a massive achievement.
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) does seem to have the platform ready for a new era search engine, that will revolutionize everything in the business. Mark Zuckerberg announced recently, in an interview with Techcrunch, that his company would be venturing into the search business, highlighting various aspects on how he intends to differentiate it from the rest in the market. From the interview, it was quite evident that the social media company would be incorporating several concepts of social networking into its search engine.
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) does indeed have a huge advantage in this perspective, especially considering the company just reported to have hit a milestone user base. Additionally, just as featured in several of our articles, user profile data is becoming increasingly important. This is what Zuckerberg perceives to be the missing element in the current search engines.
He is quoted saying that the idea is to make sure that, Facebook users don’t just see what friends are saying and brands are promoting, but they, in fact, get a smart way to navigate the entire Web, outside of Facebook’s walls. This holds some similarity to the way targeted custom ads work; regardless of whether you are within Facebook’s walls or not, you can still be targeted by advertisers. Additionally, it will also be using the user’s data, in relation to friends, and friends’ friends, as well as within your entire network.
“The whole vision around News Feed was that it should be like a newspaper, and shouldn’t just be a list of posts your friends are making. I mean we should be able to, really show you interesting trends and things that are happening,” Zuckerberg said.
He then added:
“There are already trillions of connections between friend requests and all content that’s being pushed into the system. At some point, that will start to be a better map of how you navigate the Web than the traditional link structure of the Web. I think there’s an opportunity to really build something interesting there,” further emphasizing the kind of the new age search engine he envisions for Facebook.
Notwithstanding, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) faces challenge from every corner of the world in its prospective new venture. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s Bing is an up and coming force in the business, currently, already challenging Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) within the U.S. In Asia, Facebook is banned in the mainland China, a country that boast more population than Facebook’s 1 billion user milestone; and Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ:BIDU), another search engine company, calls the shots, in the country.
When asked by Businessweek about Facebook’s plans in China, Zuckerberg said that it could take some time before the company finally ventures in the world’s most populous nation, adding that whenever that happens, it will have to be something that makes everyone happy, including Facebook.
Unlike Facebook, which first began as a social media company, and now is adding search business to its portfolio; Google did the exact opposite, and now is challenging for a share of the social networking business. Therefore, could Facebook’s proposed new venture be the pioneer of the next 1 billion users? A tally of 2 billion looks almost impossible, but at 500m, we could have easily dismissed 1 billion; well, Zuckerberg thinks it’s a long shot, but still believes it is possible, and I can not fault him for that.
At the time of this writing, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) stock was trading at $21.81 per share, down $0.03, or 0.11% decline from yesterday’s close.
