Facebook Looks to Improve Search

Recent reports from various sources revealed that the social networking giant Facebook is currently working on a search engine to improve the scenario in social search.

According to a report in Bloomberg Businessweek, Facebook has deployed about twenty four engineers into the project, which is being led by former Google engineer Lars Rasmussen to improve the search engine currently available on the social network.

The magazine’s unnamed sources said, “The project is to help users better sift through the volume of content that members create on the site, such as status updates, and the articles, videos, and other information across the Web that people “like” using Facebook’s omnipresent thumbs-up button.”

Facebook currently offers a search tool powered by Microsoft’s Bing and it was designed to find users rather than web pages.

Tim Shepherd, an analyst at the research company Canalys, said, “A Facebook search engine would be unlikely to work solely in a conventional way. To succeed in capturing any real share from Google and to prove differentiated utility, Facebook would need to leverage its unquestionable strength in ‘social’, helping users answer ‘who’ questions in addition to Google’s ‘what’ questions.”

However, Facebook has declined to comment on this matter.