Roughly six weeks after rolling out its new search feature, Graph Search, social-networking site Facebook has shared information on how ‘hundreds of thousands’ of people are using the new tool.
In an official post on 28 February, the company said that people are still using its new search service in the old way, i.e. to find friends, and have suggested some ideas that users should try, such as finding videos of friends, photos of friends before a specific date or friends who like a famous person (actor, singer etc).
The company explained that people can locate pictures not shared by friends and family but from brands such as the New York Times and the National Geographic, or can find photos shared about activities (like underwater photography) and the like.
Facebook’s post went on to say how users of Graph Search can plan activities and trips with examples like ‘ski resorts my friends have been to’.
Finally, the company suggested that its new search service can be used to find things like ‘movies liked by people who like my favorite movies’ or ‘apps my friends like’, for example.
The post appeared on Facebook’s newsroom blog rather than on its main blog, suggesting that the company’s target audience is news publications – those who can pass the word on to the general public. Facebook wants people to know that they can search in a different way – other than just finding people – thus helping the social media platform to build a search capability that could rival in some way that of Google, industry expert Danny Sullivan wrote on Search Engine Land.