Facebook announced its new and improved search engine today.
Before all you Facebook-haters-who-are-on-Facebook-everyday explode with criticisms and privacy complaints, I would just like to bravely say…I like this new Facebook search.
The new “Graph Search” is Facebook’s revamped search engine where you can search for details within your social “graph”. This means Facebook will be using all the 
information (People, Photos, Places, Interests) you and your friends have ever shared on Facebook to its fullest potential by allowing you to filter, categorize, and search through this overwhelming amount of data. Facebook’s new Graph Search will allow you to search things such as “Friends who live in Vancouver”, “Restaurants in New York my friends have been to”, “Photos of me and (friend’s name)”. You can also do searches on people that are not your friends, as long as they have set the information they shared as “Public”.
Still confused? Click here and here and here to understand more from Facebook personally on how their new search engine will work. Here’s a page explaining the new search for businesses as well.
And here are my own reasons on why I like the new Facebook Graph Search:
- The old Facebook search sucks. I always knew this and rarely ever used the search function except to quickly search up a friend’s profile. However, I learned how inefficient it really was when I was comparing different social search engines for a school assignment, I couldn’t find ANYTHING with Facebook’s search.
- That being said, I don’t think Facebook’s new search engine can be compared to search engines like Google or Bing that are use for facts and answers about things in the world. In my opinion, Facebook’s new search is essentially a “social” search, and people will be using it to connect with others and for social/leisure activities.
- It seems that we will be able to make some truly informative and interesting searches. Searches can be specific; instead of just searching for “People who like to do yoga”, you can search “People who like to do yoga in my hometown” or “People who like to do yoga in San Francisco, California”. Searches can get creative too, I can’t wait to search up things like “Photos I like”, “Cities (friend’s name) have been to”, “Photos of me before 2008″…etc.
- Brands and businesses will now be motivated to become even more socially present online and will integrate themselves deeper with Facebook. Successful integration will lead to efficient and informative leads through searches, and people will not only be connected better to their friends and families, but also to their favourite businesses and brands as well.
- I can see Facebook’s new Graph Search connecting people with each other on a deeper new level, which is one of Facebook’s ultimate goals. I believe this will be a good thing for people to interact with each other more both online and offline. People can reminisce past memories together online with searches of past photos, and new interactions offline can also be created when shared interests and hobbies are realized.
For all of you that have beared with me until now without exploding your heads off with privacy complaints, I do realize there is a privacy issue here. However, you know where your privacy settings are on Facebook, so use them. To be honest, I can’t really empathize much with people that comp
lain about privacy on their social media accounts. I feel that it is from our own free will we chose to join the online social world, so we are responsible for ourselves and shouldn’t blame lack of privacy on anyone. Obviously, if you find a photo from one of your Facebook albums on a random internet ad, then THAT’S a privacy breach. When it comes down to it, just think before you post, only share things that you feel truly comfortable sharing with others, and won’t get you in trouble even if it somehow goes public.
The new Facebook Graph Search was just announced today, so I don’t know its full potential yet and exactly what we will be able to search. However, I see a lot of potential in it and have signed up for the beta version, waiting to try it out & to report back to y’all!
