Cross Facebook with Google, and theoretically you get an awesome new search tool that can deliver the kind of 'word-of-mouth' advertising opportunities that advertisers crave. But to fully realize that potential, Facebook still has a ways to go, and it will need lots of help from users to get there.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday announced Facebook's new search tool called 'graph search.' The promise of graph search, which uses the database of social information that Facebook captures on its site, is to answer the questions that a traditional search engine like Google can't compute.

A Facebook user might forget the name of someone met at a friend's party, for instance, but does remember that the person is friends with John Smith and went to Yale. A search for 'friends of John Smith who went to Yale' will deliver profiles of people fitting that description. Maybe a Facebook user has a trip to Paris planned and wants recommendations from friends on where to stay. The user might reach out to any friends that pop up in a search for 'friends that have been to Paris.'

The commercialpotential for such a tool is similar to the service Yelp offers today, though instead of random reviews from strangers on nearby restaurants, Facebook users might find out that a friend has been to the Maggiano's down the road and liked it a lot. That would be much more useful.

Graph search is still in an early test phase, and so, to start, Facebook is rolling it out to only a limited number of users and not on mobile. But the social network recently unveiled a similar mobile tool that offers a peek at how graph search can help businesses. Facebook users that tap the 'Nearby' tab in its mobile app see a collection of nearby establishments with Facebook pages that are 'liked' by the user's friends. Those are potentially very powerful recommendations coming from friends.

The challenge for Facebook is that its users may have to create lots more content for its social search tool to be very useful. Right now, it is doubtful that a given Facebook user's few-hundred friends click 'like' frequently enough or 'check-in' in enough places to create a sufficiently dense database of recommendations. Yelp has thousands of users regularly contributing content; even Google is collecting reviews for its own local search tool.

And while Facebook says that over 13 million businesses world-wide have created a page on its site, Yelp claims to have around 20 million business profile pages in the U.S. alone.

Even if the commercialpotential of Facebook's search engine is limited to start off with, it is still good news for shareholders that the company is investing in such tools to take advantage of the unique data it has linking people's likes and their human relationships. That should boost user engagement, driving revenue.

Still, to steal a march on Google in search, Facebook users need to get even more engaged in mapping who, and what, they like.

ROLFE WINKLER

• advertising [´ædvətaiziŋ]   n.广告a.广告的   (初中英语单词)
• executive [ig´zekjutiv]   a.行政的 n.行政官   (初中英语单词)
• instance [´instəns]   n.例子，实例，例证   (初中英语单词)
• description [di´skripʃən]   n.描写   (初中英语单词)
• commercial [kə´mə:ʃəl]   a.商业的 n.广告节目   (初中英语单词)
• collection [kə´lekʃən]   n.收集；征收；募捐   (初中英语单词)
• challenge [´tʃælindʒ]   n.&vt.向....挑战；怀疑   (初中英语单词)
• sufficiently [sə´fiʃəntli]   ad.充分地，足够地   (初中英语单词)
• advantage [əd´vɑ:ntidʒ]   n.优势；利益   (初中英语单词)
• engagement [in´geidʒmənt]   n.婚约；雇用；受聘   (初中英语单词)
• potential [pə´tenʃəl]   n.&a.潜在的；可能的   (高中英语单词)
• random [´rændəm]   n.偶然的行动   (高中英语单词)
• limited [´limitid]   a.有限(制)的   (高中英语单词)
• doubtful [´dautful]   a.怀疑的，可疑的   (高中英语单词)
• regularly [´regjuləli]   ad.有规律地；经常地   (高中英语单词)
• unique [ju:´ni:k]   a.唯一的 n.独一无二   (高中英语单词)
• traditional [trə´diʃənəl]   a.传统的，习惯的   (英语四级单词)
• network [´netwə:k]   n.网状物 vt.联播   (英语四级单词)
• fitting [´fitiŋ]   a.适当的 n.试衣   (英语六级单词)
• profile [´prəufail]   n.侧面 vt.画...侧面   (英语六级单词)