Facebook’s latest tool, the Facebook Graph Search, has apparently passed the initial beta launch and will now be rolling out to all Facebook users in the US. This search bar will help Facebook users find information about their friends, family and even themselves from within the Facebook network. In many ways this is something that really should have been added quite some time ago as it addresses a problem many people have with the social networking giant. Finding information they, or their ‘friends’ posted in the past.
Many who were in the beta test, and the investors in Facebook believe that it is better late than never though as it seems like this will be a popular tool. Facebook has gone as far as to say that the Graph Search is going to be the third pillar of Facebook, along with the News Feed and the Timeline. Whether it is as popular as they hope is yet to be seen, but it is definitely a major innovation for the social network.
The new search function allows for natural language search queries on people, places, things and just about anything else that people might put up on Facebook. It will help people find old acquaintances and add them as friends by suggesting matches based on a far broader set of standards. This will be useful for many, though very few people had been complaining about not being able to get enough Facebook friends.
It is also important to look at this new search feature on Facebook as their first step toward entering the already competitive search market. If (or should I say when) Facebook decides to start adding in additional web-based results to their search engine it would be convenient for users to just stay right on Facebook’s page for search rather than browsing over to Google or another search engine site. Google has long been attempting to get into the social networking market, and maybe this is the first step of Facebook going on the offensive against their competitor.
If Facebook does make a strong push into the search engine market it could mean trouble for the other major search engines. As it stands Facebook is the Fourth most visited site by US users, behind Google, Yahoo and Microsoft sites. If Facebook eliminates the need for users to go to a dedicated search engine page they could quickly find themselves moving up this list.
Facebook has a long way to go before Google has to be too worried, but Yahoo and Bing might lose their hard fought market share when Facebook enters this market. Over the next several weeks as this new tool rolls out to all US Facebook users will be watched closely by marketers and investors. If users like what they see, it could cause major changes to both the social networking and the search engine markets.
The official announcement from Facebook about their Graph Search can be found HERE.
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