Facebook is always thinking of the next best thing and ways to improve their site, and they have done it again! Yesterday Facebook launched Graph Search, which enables users to search people, places, photos, and interests within their list of friends.It pulls information from user’s profiles and ranks your friends based on their importance to you. User’s privacy settings are what determines what information from their page can appear in search results. If a user has everything as public, it is very likely that if a stranger to them makes a search “people who live in New York” they might appear in the results, just towards the bottom.
Graph Search was created with the typical user in mind so that any user will be able to form queries easily. You can be as vague or detailed with your search as you want. Some examples would be “music my friends like” or could be changed to “music my friends in Chicago like”. Users will be able to refine their search with additional filters to the right of the search results, similar to when you search for someone that you aren’t friends with.
The Graph Search beta is slowly rolling out to users, or you can request access at facebook/about/graphsearch.
Currently it is only available in English and for desktop use only. Graph Search also only applies to people, places,photos and interests, however, Facebook says they are working on incorporating posts and Open Graph actions as well. Graph Search will be in the same place where the current search bar is, and anything that can’t be searched through profiles will still be searched on the web where results from Bing will display.
*Images from Facebook.com