HubShout | Online Marketing Solutions

Alright, so we were just discussing if the future of Facebook hinges on search in the forum. Moments ago, in a press conference, Facebook announced that it will be rolling out as Mashable calls it "a smarter search engine."

Mashable:
Facebook Unveils a Smarter Search Engine

It seems fun and scary. I do not think Big Brother from 1984 had as much information at his disposal.

Another just said "This might get scare people to move away from Facebook....to intrusive?"

Seems like facebook is giving us a way to get to the info that we want. My guess is that we'll just see the same 5% of people who post their whole life on facebook minute by minute and grow tired of this quickly. There is only so many times that I want to know "pizza restaurant liked by bob who has a kid named sally and likes olives and has traveled to italy".

With the amount of information Facebook has on each user this could be scary!

ITA with what Chad H. says -- I think this will give us a lot of the same information we see on a day-to-day basis. We already know which of our friends like what TV shows or are obsessed with bacon (that's me, in my circle) or play darts or love dubstep or whatever. The one difference that I could see being perceived as scary/intrusive is the fact that strangers can search us out by those preferences -- which I think will lead to people "liking" brands and places and products a lot less, and possibly even unliking things in order to remove themselves from the search results.

Does anyone else think this sounds like Bing?! When Bing! was launched. I may be mistaken, but wasn't it branded as "A Smarter way to Search."

Facebook search is based on Bing already. Which probably isn't a good thing, but is necessary to remain a challenge to Google. And privacy is an outdated, obsolescent 20th century concept. We might as well stop trying to hold onto it in the age of information. While there are obvious corporate uses to this data, if we moved on from privacy as a society, we could probably develop collective uses as well, or new and refined social structures, based around common interests and the eventual breakdown of secrecy.

But I really really do want to know what all my friends bought at Trader Joe's. How will I know what to buy?

It'll only be a matter of time until you can check out by taking a cell phone photo of your cart and share it (5% off if you post it publicly) and it automatically bills to your debit card.

Two birds with one stone here: expedite the shopping process and cause people to share exactly every grocery they buy, right to all their friends.