Facebook Graph Search was announced at the company’s press event today, the new platform allows users to find highly specific information based on their social graph. Graph Search is very different from traditional web search, says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as it focuses on giving you answers instead of links.
The Facebook Graph Search feature is currently only available in English and it is in limited beta with more users coming on-board in the following months. This first version of Graph Search focuses on four different areas: People, photos, places and interests.
Here are some example queries that users will be able to use:
- Friends who live in my city
- People from my hometown who like running
- Friends of friends who have been to Disneyland
- Personal trainers who live in San Diego and like cycling
- People who like things I like
- People who like basketball and live nearby
- Photos I like
- Photos of my family
- Photos of my friends before 2000
- Photos of my friends taken in Las Vegas
- Photos of the Eiffel Tower
- Restaurants in Chicago
- Cities visited by my family
- Indian restaurants liked by my friends from India
- Tourist attractions in Paris visited by my friends
- Restaurants in San Francisco liked by chefs
- Countries my friends have visited
- Music my friends like
- Movies liked by people who like movies I like
- Languages my friends speak
- Action games played by friends of my friends
- Movies liked by people who are film directors
- Books read by CEOs
Facebook Graph Search is the networks first attempt at social search and will appear as its own larger search bar at the top of every page. Privacy has been taken into serious consideration and users will only be able to see content that was already visible to them in the first place.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg also announced that among the 1 billion users now using Facebook, there are 240 billion photos and one trillion connections.
To learn more about Facebook Graph Search and sign up for the waiting list, you can visit here.
Here’s a quick look at the layout for the new Facebook search function:
WHAT a Great idea?