Social mogul Facebook recently announced it’s newest platform tool: Social Graph Search. Expected to be unveiled in the next few months, Graph Search is essentially a Facebook search engine–prompting many to cite this as the company’s latest move in its never-ending chess game with Google.
But unlike Google (and very much like what Bing tried to be), Graph Search is highly visual. Not only can you find the information you’re looking for, but it is presented in Facebook’s photo-heavy format. The search also gives you an extremely personalized experience that no other can, as the answers are drawn from within your network. If your network isn’t extensive enough to provide an answer to your query, reportedly Microsoft’s search engine Bing will provide supplemental information.
The biggest difference between Graph Search and other search engines is that Facebook’s engine is designed to accept natural, colloquial language in search queries. Although technically not a web search, some have suggested that Graph Search could change the rest of the web’s engines. If users become accustomed to searching for things like, “Which friends have been to London?” or, “What books do doctors like?”–it could certainly force other engines to adapt to user preferences.
At the very least, Graph Search should make Facebook itself more user-friendly. Now instead of backtracking through countless “Load More”s to find that pub you and your friends went to last year, you can just search for it.
Sign up for the Graph Search beta and get a sneak-peek here.
