Should Microsoft buy Facebook?

Hugh MacLeod writes a very interesting post today on two topics, firstly on the nature of search, and especially its relationship to Social Networks, and secondly on the nature of Microsoft's acquisition path.

In essence Hugh's argument is that, when it come to searching for, say, a restaurant in another town, then instead of Google one can use one's own social network/s. Hugh's is huge, which he admits, and then thinks about how less well endowed people may use such a tool:

So I'm thinking about how Facebook and/or its competition could help fill the gap.

If if they can, even partially, then Google should be concerned... because at the end of the day, all search begins and ends with people, not algorithms.

Now as I understand it, this is part of the concept behind Mahalo, which is sort of a Search + Yahoo Answer hybrid. However, to make it work they have had to limit the answers to the common stuff in the "Hit Head", so can't really deal with Long Tail stuff.

One of the comments on Hugh's post makes another related point, ie that Social Nets may be OK for "Social" stuff like restaurants, but how about answering a question about something like the effects of low Reynolds numbers (the description of the type of flow due to the viscosity of a fluid) .

Hit Mahalo with "Low Reynolds Number" and you get:

We haven't written a result page for "low reynolds number" yet. Why?
Notify me when Mahalo creates a result page for "low reynolds number"

..and it defaults to Google. As an experiment I have mailed the same on Facebook and Twitter too - lets see what happens .

But I think Hugh is right re Search not ending at pure Algorithms. Clearly a deeper understanding of context is the next stage, and clearly one's social network has a deeper understanding of context - but it probably has to be much vaster than "your" social network to have a fraction of the reach of a Google (as Hugh notes). There are New Search approaches that try and create context (eg by results other people have valued on the same search topic etc). We believe that another approach is to add your context voluntarily before the search, this is in essence what we built for the BBC Innovations lab project to monitor Zeitgeist.

To enable this within a SocNet you would need to enable a search capability, allow user-set context to occur (or be deduced) then record and cross reference the searches, results and actions. Very do-able, though non trivial.

On the topic of Hugh's title, Microsoft Should buy Facebook, the issues are:

(i) the price - an order of magnitude higher than News International paid for MySpace
(ii) the amortisation period - how many years will Facebook be going for before the newer brighter Next SocNet comes along.

It would be an interesting business case to build, the "what you have to believe" would probably make even a Mobile 3G pundit blush .

In fact, the build case would probably be very attractive....if one could build the Next Facebook and integrate it in the browser, now that would create serious value.

Now could Microsoft do that?