Facebook Announces New Graph Search

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new beta service called Graph Search.

This will allow users to navigate the Internet through the data Facebook owns.

For example, users will be able to search across different friends' Timelines without having to visit each individual profile to figure out if they like a specific place or thing.

David Wright and Joanna Stern at ABC News describe Graph Search as " turning some of the personal information people have shared on Facebook into a powerful searchable database."

For example, a potential graph query could be "Who are my friends that live in San Francisco?" Graph search would then scan all your Facebook friend's pages and spit back the relevant information about friends who live in San Francisco.

Another potential search term could be "Show me friends who like Star Wars and Harry Potter" for a big movie night.

Graph search is Facebook's way of searching for objects on the Internet by how they are mapped out in likes, not links. Metadata and connections are also factored in. Facebook is using Graph Search as a way to get back to its roots and allow people to use the graph to make new connections.

Graph search is currently in beta but people, photos, places, and interests are at the foundation of the beta. If the data from your Graph Search is too general, you can refine the search to get specifically what you want.

Zuckerberg told an audience of journalists and Facebook engineers that, "e very piece of content on Facebook has its own audience, making graph search very challenging to build."

Here's some more information on exactly what Graph Search is via ABC News :

Until now, the search bar you saw when you logged in to your Facebook page wasn't very powerful. You could only search for Timelines -- your friends' pages, other peoples' public pages and business or product pages.

But now, after close to a year and a half of development, the new "Graph Search" will allow you to search and discover more about your friends and other information that's been put on the world's largest social site.

In case you were wondering, Graph Search is privacy aware too — e very piece of content has its own audience, m ost content is not public and y ou can only search for content that has been shared with you.

Graph Search is rolling out slowly, it will only be available to a limited set of U.S. users at first. Users can sign up for the wait list here: https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch.

Bing search results are integrated into Graph Search too.

See Also: This Is What Facebook Graph Search Looks Like >

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