What does the new system of Facebook “likes” mean to the reputation management industry? Facebook is intending to use the data, but it is, as of yet, unknown exactly how they intend to use it. Over at a blog called SearchEngineLand they have an article which says, in part:

the vision here is a network of discovery tools and information that operate higher up in the funnel than search: what are my friends doing, where are they eating, what do they recommend? This clearly doesn’t eliminate the need for search. But it does represent an alternative way in many cases to discover information.Yet the mountains of data that Facebook will gain could improve Facebook search results and potentially the coming, new and improved Bing integration. At a simple level, if Facebook knows the most “Liked” sushi restaurants in New York and those liked by my social network it can show me that information in search results. That hypothetically makes Facebook search much more social and more of a “recommendations engine” than Google at this point.

The online reputation management business may have a tough time dealing with this development, should it ever come to fruition.