Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has just unveiled a new function called Graph Search at a news conference at its California headquarters.
Zuckerberg, said Graph Search would scan Facebook’s database of more than 1 billion people rather than the web for information.
He said users could ask Facebook for “photos of my friends in 2009″ and it would find them but added that this was just an early beta version covering only people, places, photos and interests.
Facebook said: “Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected. The main way we do this is by giving people the tools to map out their relationships with the people and things they care about.
“We call this map the graph. It’s big and constantly expanding with new people, content and connections. There are already more than a billion people, more than 240 billion photos and more than a trillion connections.
“Graph Search takes us back to our roots and allows people to use the graph to make new connections.”
Here is how it works:
- 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.
How is it different from a normal web search?
A traditional web search takes a set of keywords and finds the best possible match those keywords.
Graph Search lets users combine phrases (for example: “my friends in New York who like Jay-Z”) to get that set of people, places, photos or other content that’s been shared on Facebook.
What can you actually search for?
The first version of Graph Search focuses on four main areas — people, photos, places, and interests.
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”
What about privacy issues?
Facebook said: “We’ve built Graph Search from the start with privacy in mind, and it respects the privacy and audience of each piece of content on Facebook. It makes finding new things much easier, but you can only see what you could already view elsewhere on Facebook.”
Shares in Facebook made a market debut at $38, but sank by more than 50 percent in the following months.
The shares have clawed back some of those losses, and began the day down around 20% from the IPO level.
Via: Sky News and Facebook Newsroom