Facebook is making its ‘Graph Search’ public today in an attempt to mine the wealth of data produced by users, utilising everything from casual status updates to likes and photos. The product has been in beta for more than six months, but will now be rolled out to users with the “US English” language setting after “tens of millions of people have helped improve the product just by using it and giving feedback.”
Graph Search works by answering users’ queries using the information people voluntarily punch into their Facebook account. Everything from the restaurants you’ve liked to your current relationship status can be used to answer searches. Facebook have always denied that Graph Search would be a rival to Google, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been keen to talk up the differences: “Web search is designed to take any open-ended query and give you links that might have answers. Graph Search is designed to take a precise query and give you an answer, rather than links that might provide an answer.”
Facebook is hoping that you’ll use this information in a number of appropriate, brand-responsible ways. If you’re taking a trip abroad for example then you might search for “Hotels in New York liked by my friends”. Of course, the algorithms that run the search are pretty open, and the actual queries that you can get ‘successful’ results for are far more varied then the above examples suggest.
Facebook is also doing its best to tackle these privacy issues head on , but once they overcome the ignorance of the average user there’s still the biggest challenge to individuals’ privacy: Facebook itself.
