Facebook takes on Google and Yelp with Graph Search

We're seeing numerous reports that Facebook has begun enabling Graph Search for users that were among the first to sign up for the beta program last week. The ambitious new feature promises to change the way you find things on the social network by returning results to natural language queries like "restaurants nearby my friends like" and "pictures of my friends and me." Once you accept Facebook's invitation to try Graph Search, the menubar at the top of the site will switch to a new design...

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Facebook launched Graph Search as a beta product for many reasons: its gradual rollout to only US English users; its limitation to people, photos, places, and interests (posts and Open Graph actions still aren't included); an attempt to manage what could be outsized expectations from both users and Wall Street. But it's also because Graph Search isn't available on most of the devices people use to access Facebook, and it won't be anytime soon.

Graph Search isn't mobile, whether on the web or...

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This morning Facebook announced its latest salvo in the battle for web dominance: Graph Search. Using the tremendous amount of data on the company's servers as a resource, Graph Search lets users find restaurants they may like, people they might want to know, and more — all based off natural-language searches. Wired takes a look at the origins of the new feature, from Mark Zuckerberg's first pitch to former-Googler Lars Rasmussen, to how Graph Search helped inspire changes to Facebook's...

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We just got a chance to play with Facebook’s new Graph Search with our personal account, and it’s decidedly not a small addition to the site. The entire top menubar has been redesigned, with universal search pinned to the top left, and the friend request, messages, and notification buttons moved over to the far right of the screen. Similarly, you’ll notice subtle tweaks to the icon design and coloring. But most important: the word "Facebook" has been banished from the top left, replaced...

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Introducing what he called "the third pillar" of Facebook ecosystem today, Mark Zuckerberg was adamant: "Graph Search is not web search," said Facebook's CEO. The implication is that it offers users something different from other search products and Facebook's current features, and that it's technically much harder.

That difficulty means that Zuckerberg has to manage expectations, qualifying Graph Search as "early," as "challenging," as "beta." Without these hedges, if search doesn't work, W...

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Mark Zuckerberg took time out of this morning's presentation to highlight one Graph Search partner in particular: Microsoft Bing. According to the CEO, the company has teamed up with Bing "to show you world class search results for things that don't match your query." It's essentially to supplement Facebook's search results with information that it may not already have as part of its user profiles: weather, music results, and the like. Bing results show up as traditionally-formatted blue web...

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Facebook has announced that it's improving its search experience with "Graph Search," a new way to search between Facebook's massive amount of photos, people, and connections that Mark Zuckerberg says is "not web search." The new tool is designed to find specific pieces of content from a precise query, rather than web search, which returns general responses to a general query. "Web search and graph search are really, really different," he says. In order to provide answers in an intuitive way,...

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