Facebook begins search’ for top rank

The world’s largest social networking company, Facebook, is developing a search engine to take on Google and Microsoft.

Mark Zuckerberg’s company is also tapping Indian talent among others to develop an ecosystem for the search engine.

Facebook is not stopping at that. Sudhanshu Garg, a programme manager at Amazon, is working on an app that aims to be the Wikipedia for Facebook users. “Lot of information on Facebook is junk and this app would help in collating useful information similar to Wikipedia,” he said. These efforts will help users find information within their circle of friends instead of looking for it on the Internet. Saurav Bhardwaj, founder of start-up Digital Venture Technologies, is developing an app for Facebook which will collate blood groups of all users.

Industry watchers believe that these efforts are part of the building blocks that would eventually put Facebook on top of the search-based marketing, which is dominated by Google today. While Facebook would not confirm this, Bear Douglas, a developer advocate at Facebook, told Business Line that the company is building an ecosystem to create apps.

India with its large developer base continues to be a draw for Facebook, Yahoo!, Microsoft and others. According to IDC estimates, India and China had the highest growth in software developers between 2003 and 2008 at 24.5 and 25.6 per cent CAGR respectively.