Steps taken to find the article

First I tried library database, but after several failed attempts, I googled “ny times facebook gragh search jan 28”. I clicked a NY Times link resulted from Google search and it seemed like a right one, but turns out it was a NY Times blog post with bunch of links of articles from other news websites.

From that point, I gave another try with NY Times website and typed “facebook graph search”, but even that didn’t work. The weired thing was that a lot of articles from search results shiwed the phrase “facebook graph search” but when I clicked on them, they had  irrelevant topics.  I asked for help and Prof.Francoeur told me to get rid of the word “graph”, so I typed in “facebook search”. Finally ! I was able to find the article.

About the author

The name of the author is Somini Sengupta. She was born in Calcutta and grew up in Canada and California. She graduated with honors B.A in English and development studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She was a West Africa and Delhi Bureau chief and currently a technology correspondent at the NY Times.

List of people mentioned in article

Kathryn Hymes – Joined Facebook graph searched team last March/ Left Stanford to join the team.

Amy Campbell – Earned doctorate in linguistics from the University of California, Berkel / Recruited Ms. Hymes

Loren Cheng – Led natural processing part of the graph search system / An engineer educated at Stanford

Clifford I. Nass –  a professor of communication at Stanford who specializes in human-computer interaction.

Keywords and Ideas

Facebook / Search Tool / Robospeak / Psychology / Communicate / Human Behavior / Homophily / Context / Social distance

“The project represents how Facebook builds products. It studies human behavior. It tests its ideas. Its goal is to draw more and more people to the site and keep them there longer”

”  The search tool, in its first iteration, answers queries by mining some of the data at the company’s disposal, including photos, interests and likes. It will eventually mine status updates and other activities, from what users eat to where they hike.”

” The company is betting on the principle of homophily: if it is from someone the user likes, the user may be more likely to pay attention to it — and click on the link.”