By Preeteesh Peetabh Singh
Dialog Reporter
Speculations of Facebook planning to launch its own smart phone have gone out the window. The big project they are working on is finally out in its beta version. It’s called the Facebook graph search, a social search engine.
It’s an attempt to take online searches to the next level, making it more personalized in comparison to the generic internet search.
Facebook graph search will now enable people to explore the world through photos of people they know and also people they don’t know, if they are publicly shared. It will allow finding people who share interests like sports, music, food restaurants, shops and the places they have visited at the click of a button.
At the Facebook graph search launch on Jan 15, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook chairman and CEO claimed that it is going to be the third pillar of Facebook after the news feed and timeline. He said that it will serve as an amazing resource for a lot of people around the world to use.
How does it work? It’s pretty simple; various personalized questions could be searched for by typing in the search box.
‘Single women living in Toronto who are interested in dating’
‘Friends in the United States who like How I met your mother’
‘Canadians watching the super bowl right now’
Facebook graph search’s opening page as captured by Dialog reporter Preeteesh Peetabh Singh.
These are a few examples on how narrow a search could possibly get. The networking site will match key words from its database and present the user with the results they are looking for. The graph search can be used as a dating media; it can also be useful for businesses to find potential customers.
“Playing with #GraphSearch! I just found out 800,000 journalists who like cheese” tweeted Tory Starr, Social Media producer at the media and news magazine The World.
It can be interesting and fun but at the same time it might also pose personal security and privacy threats. Every page or post liked by a Facebook member might be used as a graph search keyword.
The Facebook team present at the launch which included Zuckerberg, Tom Stocky, product management director, and Lars Rasmussen, software developer claimed that this search would only give access to shared information. Privacy settings will still be flexible and people can chose what content to allow on graph and what not.
The Facebook graph search is not fully available yet; people will have to go through a waiting list before they get their hands on the social search engine.
