Facebook Expands Graph Search

When Facebook introduced Graph Search, its internal search engine, back in January, it didn't exactly make competitors jealous.  Sure it allowed searches on specific things like people, places, photos, and interests, but users still couldn't search through Facebook posts or status updates.

On September 30th, Facebook announced that their graph search now allows users to do just that.  You can search for particular status updates, photos, check-ins, and comments.  For example, people can type in, “pictures of me and my dog” to find photos in which you’re both tagged.   I typed "My friends that like Neil Young." and received two pages of results. This is a simple way to figure out who I should invite to the next Neil Young concert.   

These topic-specific searches might encroach upon one of Twitter's strengths -  following discussions about pop-culture events.  This feature is valuable to Facebook as it attempts to convince broadcasters that it’s an online destination for real-time chatter.  Journalists and historians should also appreciate this new search functionality.  With more than 1 billion people on Facebook, the potential for searching keywords around a breaking news event that have been geotagged could quickly give journalists the inside track on finding sources.

The New York Times thinks the graph search function might actually make Google a little jealous.  What do you think? Is the improving functionality of Facebook's internal search engine a game changer?  Will it lead to even greater ad revenues for the social network?



This user put "posts about Dancing with the Stars by my friends" into their graph search. The responses included this post by a friend who commented on or shared content about the show