Will Taste Graphs Change Social Commerce?

Ever wonder how Facebook picks friends to place on your profile page, or why certain ones are always on it? You know it must be a data structure, but yet it boggles your mind every time? Up to now, these mysterious selections were centered around “social graphs”, or relationship-based connections a given individual has, based on a variety of operative factors. In the near future, Facebook will dive deeper into your personal life and connect you with people based on interest with the implementation of “taste graphs”.

Just when you thought Facebook couldn’t get any more intrusive, it will use these taste graphs to connect people based on personal interests. Unless you’ve been under a rock since the New Year, you have heard that Facebook is nearing a $5 billion IPO. Along with this offering comes the inherent pressure of investors for Facebook to find new sources of profit growth while reducing their current reliance on advertising. That’s where taste graphs come in.

Not only will these new insights increase the impact of social influence, but they will also allow sellers to position their products to people most likely to be of interest. The new mix of social data with personal information will give companies the opportunity to hyper-target customers who are clearly already interested. In turn, Facebook will see more sales as well as more shopper satisfaction. To put it simply, you will no longer have to go looking for products, they will come looking for you.

After all, reliance on social graphs was not a sustainable approach to product discovery for Facebook or consumers. Recommendations based on what your friends like are nowhere near as accurate as those based on your taste graph. If anything, it will alleviate unnecessary advertising and mutually benefit sellers and buyers. “Tastemakers” of choice can impact how we discover options and make decisions, ultimately allowing users to create a taste graph for sellers to target – which opens the question of whether social networks bring similar people together, or create similar people?

Either answer may empower taste graphs to give rise to a new generation of social commerce based on collective interest instead of personal passion.

Do you think taste graphs will ultimately create a new generation of social commerce?

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