How Facebook Graph Would Change The Way You Shop From Social Networking?

Let's count together the many conveniences of Facebook as a social networking website: you can rant about how bad your day was, you can share your photos of the exotic trip you had in Mauritius with your beloved, you can like updates of your friends and family, you can check in to fancy places and let people know you have been there, you can
tag your friends in your get-together photos (and get tagged in return) or you can simply add your acquaintances in your friend list and broaden you virtual friend circle for no apparent reason. Facebook, like many other social networking websites, was designed to be another simplistic website for sharing, having fun and socializing with the people around you unlike websites such as EBay or Amazon. But more recently, we have witnessed a changing trend of Facebook towards e-marketing, online advertising and brand promotion.



In lieu of Facebook's new approach, it has recently launched an interesting search feature called the "Facebook Graph". According to a number of public iPage Reviews concerning web hosting, this new addition to the Facebook world is not only expected to change the way people search across the website, but also revolutionize the manner in which different brands market their products on the site. Everyone is aware of the fact that most businesses use their Facebook pages as a promotional tool to advertise their products and spread general awareness about their business. But with this new search feature, the way customers search for multiple brands and the way companies market their products over this forum- both are going to change tremendously.

The question still remains that if “Facebook Graph Search” is such a revolutionary feature, exactly how is it going to change anything for businesses, advertisers or anyone related to the marketing sector? But before we move on to endlessly praising or straightforwardly dismissing this feature and its specific role in altering our shopping experience, let us familiarize ourselves with this feature.

What is Facebook Graph?

Unless you have been dormant for a while, been on an alien mission far away from our galaxy or been disconnected from the web for over half a year, we are positive that you must have heard about this new feature introduced by Facebook (that is if you haven’t already got it activated for your profile). Facebook Graph search is basically an advanced kind of search program designed for advanced search. For example, if you want to check specific photos that a certain friend of yours liked on Facebook, you would simply type “Photos liked by friend’s name” and Facebook Graph will define a whole category including all these photos. Similarly, it can also be utilized to search for books, movies, music, stores and spas etc.

3 Ways in Which Facebook Graph Will Change the Way We Shop

For the Marketers:
The first and most prominent effect this feature is going to have will be on the advertisers or marketers in the industry. With the new graph search, marketers would actively engage in working towards integrating their brand promotion campaigns with this feature. For example, if a normal user searches for “Restaurants liked by friend’s name in Times Square, New York”, the brand promoter would try to ensure that he is included in that list. Like any advertising program, advertisers will try to include this feature in their future marketing plans while placing an increasing emphasis on social media publicity.

For The Businesses
Since users will primarily be basing their judgment of a particular business on their friend’s experiences, it will become highly critical for businesses to ensure they gain a strong reputation among the average Facebook user. Moreover, a user will definitely find a place recommended by a friend more reliable than any random ratings on Google or Amazon. Therefore, if a friend is carrying out an online transaction, the user may look through the specifications of the product and for that the Facebook information provided by the company on their page should be comprehensive, complete and correct.
Secondly, this feature will create room for businesses to work on brand targeting for specific groups which will mean that businesses will have to take into account social media a lot more than usual.

For the Customers

Like its effect on businesses and their advertising techniques, the introduction of Facebook Graph is likely to have a huge impact on the way customers shop. As mentioned earlier, a recommendation by a friend to buy a certain brand or visit a certain eatery will hold more weight age as compared to some random rating analysis provided by Google or another search engine. Moreover, such a feature would be a lot more convenient for users than searching on other places because a number of people actively use Facebook.