The highly publicized Graph Search from Facebook is still in its beta format and only released to select users. LinkedIn, the professional social network, has taken advantage of the Graph Search delay and put out their own new and improved form: a search called Unified Search.
Unified Search allows LinkedIn users to find professional content quicker and easier than ever before. With a live search suggestion toolbar at the top of the page, your search query begins to form from the first button you press. A great factor for this search is the ability for the search to be grouped into different categories, such as this:
Facebook’s Graph Search has been in the beta version almost as long as the opossum from my neighborhood as been evading all the wild animal traps – since January 2013. Those of us who aren’t some of the lucky few to be able to try Graph Search have been put on the waiting list ever since.
Both search tools make it easier to find exactly what the user is looking for. From the videos on Facebook’s website, it shows a simple fill-in function as their suggested search tool, but this differs from LinkedIn’s because Unified Search offers more than one suggestion per search.
Personally, I feel like Unified Search is more intuitive and will work better in the long run. It makes it easier to extend your network beyond your own connections. With the Facebook Graph Search, searches generally will be limited to your friends, because when you search for “people who like construction machinery” you may get a wide variety of odd balls that you will never end up talking to. It seems like this goes hand and hand with the Facebook being for person benefits and LinkedIn being for professional networking.
The LinkedIn search also takes into account some information about their users (200 million and counting) that they’ve put to use in the search. Results use who you are, who you know, and what your network is doing to generate your search results.
When Graph Search first came out, marketers all over were screaming about the new release and how they can use it to promote their clients. While that seems great and all, marketers aren’t the general public.
When it comes down to it, those users of each site who are basic users will find more to love about the Unified Search that LinkedIn has to offer. Those in the population who know what they’re doing with the search will more likely enjoy what Facebook has brought to the table with Graph Search.
Photo Credits: Flickr user TheSeafarer and Flickr user Sights of the City Travel
