Facebook unveils ‘GRAPH SEARCH’, the search engine for your life.
Facebook has unveiled a search engine for your life. This is a better, more intuitive way to stalk your friends, family and most importantly — random acquaintances of acquaintances.
Gizmodo:
Today’s big bad Facebook revelation is a search engine—not for the web, but for your entire life. And it’s just another step in Facebook’s attempt to conquer the entire Internet. Meet Graph Search.
Facebook’s search has been convoluted and weak for years until now—it’s hard to expect what you get when you type anything in, even if it’s your best friend’s name. People, pages, maybe places. Boring and often broken. But with today’s search monster, Zuckerberg isn’t just offering you a way to find your friends (or college frenemies). And it’s beyond just some attempt at a Google replacement. It’s an attempt to do what Google failed at doing—pulling all the information that matters to you within the context of your social life, skipping the results that are popular to The Internet, in favor of the results that are popular within a group you actually give a damn about. Not a horde of strangers. Everyone you know uses Facebook, and now those people are going to work for you when you search.
Graph Search doesn’t replace the current Facebook search, but offers a massively expanded new way to explore your web social life. Photos, places, interests, and of course, people can all be cataloged and called up instantly.
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Graph Search (currently in beta) is a live, constantly updating list of results, triggered from a nice thick search box at the top left of the page. It changes as you type, a la Google’s autocomplete queries.
As you start typing, say, “photos of my friends,” results will pop up. If you add “taken in 2008,” you’ll get those photos.
Searches are built using simple, natural language searches. “Friends who like Star Wars and Harry Potter.” “What music do my friends like?” Even more complicated questions, like “People named Brian who went to Princeton and like Star Wars.” Or hey, even “Friends of friends who are single and like Game of Thrones.” Boom—time to start flirting. Or poking. It’s also completely geographically aware, so if you’re a college sophomore looking to branch out, you can see if you have any mutual friends at a nearby school who share some hobbies with you. Instant results, with faces to put to names.
It’s also deeply graphical—and looks like the easiest way to navigate Facebook photos we’ve ever had. “Photos of my friends.” “Photos of my friends in Tokyo.” “Photos I’ve liked”—yep, you’ll be able to instantly pull up all the photos you’ve given the thumbs up to for the entirety of your time on the social network. It’s revelatory, and wonderfully nostalgic.