Habits are hard to break. Whether it’s smoking, drinking, or something as benign as leaving your dishes in the sink as opposed to putting them directly into the dishwasher, years of quickly broken New Year’s resolutions suggest that permanent changes in established behavior are easier said than done.
Such ingrained behaviors can manifest themselves in a variety of ways, from physical repetition to brand loyalty. Just try getting a Starbucks aficionado to go to Dunkin’ Donuts sometime….
Online habits are no different, and there is no more ingrained habit for most of us than striking that 10-key combination g-o-o-g-l-e-.-c-o-m in a single motion in about half a nanosecond. That hardwired habit is an influential source of Google’s search-related staying power.
With Facebook’s widely covered announcement of the introduction of Graph Search, many are asking whether this new brand of search has the ability to both gain traction among users and disrupt the current “Google habit”.
Ultimately the strength of this habit is a function of two interrelated variables: utility and frequency. There is value in either variable independently, but when combined they reinforce one another.
Google clearly occupies the coveted upper-right quadrant on the utility-frequency matrix. For Graph Search to become an unmitigated success it will need to shoot for a similar space.
