Uh oh! Stand by... A lot of your seemingly unimportant Facebook posts and likes are about to be amplified as Facebook unveils its new social search capability. I haven't studied this in detail yet (not looking forward to what I'll probably find revealed about myself!).

In the first round of punditry, I liked these observations by Richard Waters from the Financial Times:

"The problem is partly the limited range of search requests that Facebook is likely to be good at handling. You may like to post comments about films or restaurants you have enjoyed but not many people discuss their favourite cold remedies or the plumber they have found most reliable....

The battle lines in the new search wars have now been drawn. From Amazon, which handles more product-related searches than any other company, to Apple’s iPhone-based Siri and now Facebook’s social search, the new combatants are starting from their own positions of relative advantage.

The outcome of this battle, as much as the clash of smartphone hardware and operating systems, will determine the shape of the digital future."

I like the fact that Richard invokes Amazon as well as Apple's Siri, as well as the more obvious competitor, Google, elsewhere in his column. He also makes the point that the REAL battleground is search and/or marketing/recommendations from our MOBILE devices, since they have now become most users' interfaces to the world.