Facebook in January trumpeted Graph Search as the social network's "third pillar" (pillars one and two are Timeline and News Feed), which sounds very impressive and important, but few people have been able to experiment with the tool until now. Last week, the beta of Graph Search finally began rolling out to U.S. users, which means you too can try out the seven-month-old feature. Good news: It's not just for being a creeper. Bad news: Its usefulness is limited. For now.
What's Graph Search good for, anyway?
Graph Search seems like a great idea in theory. Facebook has collected billions, maybe trillions of pieces of data about its users over the last nine years, and making that data searchable is a natural move.
Facebook will help you refine your search, but its guesses are hit or miss.
Graph Search isn't turned on automatically, so your first step is activating the new feature in the search bar. Facebook will walk you through it. Once Graph Search is on, Facebook prompts you to "search for people, places, and things." Start typing. Graph Search is supposed to recognize natural language and try to guess what you're looking for, though that feature is hit or miss at the moment. You'll quickly learn the phrases that will help you get to some sort of result: "Friends who listen to Daft Punk and live in San Francisco" or "Friends of my friends who work at TechHive." It's not exactly a conversational way to search.
Right now, Graph Search is another in a long line of Facebook features designed to suck up your time and productivity. Case in point: photos. A search for photos of my friends who live in San Francisco turns up hundreds of photos dating back years, some of which have been removed from my friends' Timelines but remain easily viewable thanks to Graph Search. This feature can be useful: I searched for photos of my friends who visited Hawaii, because I just returned from a trip to Oahu and wanted to see their photos of the islands. But it also gives you the ability to search for incriminating photos of your ex, or for others to find terrible photos of you. Dislike.
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