Facebook Graph Search: That’s what Facebook was building

Posted hitesh kumawat

Speculations were high regarding Facebook’s event on Tuesday at it’s headquarters while some going on to suggest that the social networking giant might just launch it’s own smartphone. But, all that wasn’t the case as the Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg took the stage and unveiled the company’s new search feature- The “Facebook Graph Search”.

Facebook Graph Search enables the users to quickly search for any information they might need about people, photographs, places and interests within their social connections. Though, the new service is till in beta mode and is available to select users only, at present but will eventually be rolled out for every user on Facebook. The new feature will make it’s way to the desktop users first whereas the mobile version will take some more time.

With the new search feature, Facebook takes a step further to directly compete with Google, the company which earns a majority of it’s revenue through it’s most popular product- Google Search. But Zuckerberg says that unlike Google, the Facebook Graph Search isn’t a web search but a search that would give you results based on what your connections on Facebook have shared.

Once it goes live, the Facebook Graph Search will show up as a bigger search bar at the top of each page. The words you type-in on the Graph Search, appear as the title of the page and gives the users a set of results based on their search while giving you the option of changing the title of the page as well.

For instance, the user may type – “My friends in Delhi who have watched The Dark Knight” and the all the results regarding the query would be displayed in a new page with the same title. Basically, the Graph Search let’s users to type-in search phrases in natural language rather than specific keywords to search for stuff.

Cnet accurately points out the monetization aspect of the new graph search feature and says,

Graph Search will help the company prove to Wall Street that it can continue to exponentially grow another important metric: engagement. Better still, the product has the long-term potential to be a money-making machine. As Altimeter industry analyst Susan Etlinger told me, Graph Search will fill in the dots between the person, the brand, and the preference. This unlocks the potential for brands to provide people with relevant offers for things they actually want.

Many users may fear that their privacy might be at risk with this new feature, but Mark Zuckerberg pointed out during the press event that Graph Search won’t compromise on the privacy of users. Graph search will only display results which are wither public or have been shared with friends or friends of friends.