[aganek]

I think this a big deal.

The first step to a Yelp killer? Type in "Italian Restaurant" and get back list of all the restaurants your friends have checked into. A recommendation engine.

For now, its mostly to filter your facebook data. But do you think it can expand and become the goto search engine, ala google?

[shock-value]

It could maybe work if they do it like Netflix: build a profile of you based on what you have rated highly, and put you in a pool with similar people (friends or otherwise), thus providing more accurate recommendations.

But I think Facebook overhypes how much people care about their friend's preferences, at least for most things. We generally don't pick friends based on how closely their shopping/eating/whatever habits match ours.

[pico303]

At my company we've been arguing this same point for years. It doesn't matter what your friends like; it matters what people with similar interests like. Rarely are your friends and family a reflection of all of your likes and dislikes. I'm sure some psychologist could point out the low probability of forming friendships with people who are exactly like you.

It seems like Facebook and other social networks took the idea of asking your friends for a recommendation on a good doctor or auto shop and twisted it into some overly simplified premise that if one friend likes something, all of my friends will like it too.

[isameer]

Agree. There are a large class of Facebook applications that are really UIs slapped on top of graph search queries. I guess this would get really interesting in a practical sense once Facebook opens up an API for these queries.

[state_machine]

You're describing foursquare.

[aganek]

Yes. A better comparison.