bits.blogs.nytimes.com writes that Facebook has spent eight years nudging its users to share everything they like and everything they do. Now, the company is betting it has enough data so that people can find whatever they want on Facebook. And on Tuesday, it unveiled a new tool to help them dig for it.
The tool, which the company calls graph search, is Facebook’s most ambitious stab at overturning the Web search business ruled by its chief rival, Google. It is also an effort to elbow aside other Web services designed to unearth specific kinds of information, like LinkedIn for jobs, Match for dates and Yelp for restaurants.
Facebook has spent over a year honing graph search, said Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, at an event here at Facebook’s headquarters introducing the new product. He said it would enable Facebook users to search their social network for people, places, photos and things that interest them.
That might include, Mr. Zuckerberg offered, Mexican restaurants in Palo Alto that his friends have “liked” on Facebook or checked into. It might be used to find a date, dentist or job, other Facebook executives said.
“Graph search,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, “is a completely new way to get information on Facebook.”
Graph search will be immediately available to a limited number of Facebook users — in the “thousands,” Mr. Zuckerberg said — and gradually extended to the rest.
Every Internet platform company has been interested in conquering search.
But Facebook search differs from other search services because of the mountain of social data the company… (read the rest of the story HERE).
pdpEcho 
Study: How Your Facebook Privacy Settings Impact Graph Search
www.cio.com published an article today which tries a privacy impact assessment of the new Graph Search of Facebook.
After much buzz and anticipation over its “top-secret” announcement today, Facebook revealed a new search capability called Facebook Graph Search.
The feature, which is currently available in a limited beta release, lets you search for friends, photos, restaurants, games, music and more. Results that Facebook returns will depend on your friends’ privacy settings and the privacy settings of people you’re not connected to.
Graph Search is available only in English and if you want to sign up for the waitlist for Graph Search, visit facebook.com/graphsearch.
“When Facebook first launched, the main way most people used the site was to browse around, learn about people and make new connections,” writes Tom Stocky, director of product management and Lars Rasmussen, director of engineering, in a press release. “Graph Search takes us back to our roots and allows people to use the graph to make new connections.”
Graph Search will appear as a bigger search bar at the top of each page. At todays press conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a point of explaining the difference between traditional Web search and Graph Search; the two are very different, he says.
According to Facebook, Web search is designed to take a set of keywords and provide the best possible results that match those keywords. Graph Search, the company says, lets you combine phrases—such as “movies my friends like”—to find that set of people, places, photos or other content that’s been shared on Facebook.
Another difference: every piece of content on Facebook has its own audience, and Facebook has built Graph Search with that privacy in mind, it says. “It makes finding new things much easier, but… (read the whole story HERE).
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Tagged cio.com, data protection, Facebook, graph search, how will graph search impact privacy, privacy