Well, January 15th has come and gone, and Facebook has revealed the very announcement that they have had people waiting in eager anticipation to hear about. Unfortunately for many, Facebook did not announce their new line of mobile devices, which is not much of a surprise considering Mark Zuckerberg continues to deny the idea of ever creating one. That being one of the expectations that people have been having for the past week, many people were taken by surprise with the actual announcement. It was not the overhaul of the network’s design, as the Chicago Tribune was positive it would be. No, the actual announcement involved what Facebook is calling Graph Search.
“When Facebook first launched, the main way most people used the site was to browse around, learn about people and make new connections. Graph Search takes us back to our roots and allows people to use the graph to make new connections.
Graph Search will appear as a bigger search bar at the top of each page. When you search for something, that search not only determines the set of results you get, but also serves as a title for the page. You can edit the title – and in doing so create your own custom view of the content you and your friends have shared on Facebook.”
It may not seem much different from the web search we all know and love, but Facebook assures us that it is. While web search uses a specific set of keywords to provide the searcher with the best possible results to match, Graph Search allows users to combine phrases to get to a certain set of people, places, photos and other content that has been shared on Facebook. The example of a search query given in the actual announcement reads, “my friends in New York who like Jay-Z.” By combining a set of multiple phrases, the system is able to generate a more specific and relevant results page.
This may make some people a bit nervous, as it may seem that privacy would become an issue, especially in the cases of such queries as, “People near me who like trail running,” or, “People who work at my company and like to ski.” Obviously, the company took privacy into consideration, and assures us that even though Graph Search seems like it would open up a lot of information that is private, users will not be able to find out anything that they could not have already.
Graph Search is still very young, and is still in its early stages of development, but it has been released. Facebook says that the first version will focus on four main areas which include the following.
People: “friends who live in my city,” “people from my hometown who like hiking,” “friends of friends who have been to Yosemite National Park,” “software engineers who live in San Francisco and like skiing,” “people who like things I like,” “people who like tennis and live nearby”
Photos: “photos I like,” “photos of my family,” “photos of my friends before 1999,” “photos of my friends taken in New York,” “photos of the Eiffel Tower”
Places: “restaurants in San Francisco,” “cities visited by my family,” “Indian restaurants liked by my friends from India,” “tourist attractions in Italy visited by my friends,” “restaurants in New York liked by chefs,” “countries my friends have visited”
Interests: “music my friends like,” “movies liked by people who like movies I like,” “languages my friends speak,” “strategy games played by friends of my friends,” “movies liked by people who are film directors,” “books read by CEOs”
This adds a whole new level of potential to Facebook’s search function, and marketers will start finding ways to use Graph Search to their advantage. However, right now figuring out just how to do that seems a bit confusing. Overall though, it definitely seems like a good thing.
