Facebook’s event which was teased last week as their “See What We’re Building” event is going on right now, and we’re live blogging it, but one piece of news was just announced that we just couldn’t hold back from sharing with you. Facebook has just announced its Graph Search service.
Facebook’s Graph Search was created as a way for its users to receive answers to questions directly within Facebook, as opposed to a web search which will provide the answer through an external link. Questions like “Who are my friends in San Francisco?” can be revealed by using Facebook’s Graph Search.
For those of you who use Facebook but would like to have your privacy respected, Graph Search will not reveal any information you aren’t allowing to be shared through the social network. In fact, Facebook said it’s using 10 percent of its computer power just on privacy alone.
According to Facebook, its social graph is huge and always evolving as it contains a trillion connections comprised of over a billion people, over 240 billion photos and billions of other connections added on a daily basis. If you’re a heavy Facebook user and want to learn more about your friends that doesn’t involve asking them personally, then Graph Search may be just what you need in order to get to know them, without actually talking to them.
Below is the promo-video that Facebook used to illustrate their presentation:
And when a reporter asks if Facebook actually tested this with non-Facebook employees (cf. regular people), here’s the answer:
If you are wondering when you will be able to use this: Facebook is rolling this out SLOWLY, and it starts with the USA. This is a very resource-intensive feature, so it’s likely that Facebook also needs to build up some compute resources before extending this to everyone else. We should get an early access later today, so send us some questions if you are curious.
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