Facebook makes social search easier with captivating features

Face book

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new search feature that’s designed to entice people to spend more time on his company’s website and will put the world’s largest online social network more squarely in competition with Google and other rivals such as Yelp and LinkedIn.

Called “Graph Search” the new service, unveiled on Tuesday, lets users quickly sift through their social connections for information about people, interests, photos and places. It’ll help users who, for instance, want to scroll through all the photos their friends have taken in Paris or search for the favourite TV shows of all their friends who happen to be doctors.

Until now, Facebook users were unable to search for friends who live in a certain town or like a particular movie. With the new feature, people can search for friends who, say, live in Chennai who also like “Life of Pi.” And Facebook’s users will be able to enter search terms the same way that they talk, relying on natural language instead of a few stilted keywords to telegraph their meaning.

Only a fraction of Facebook’s more than 1 billion users will have access to the new search tool beginning Tuesday because the company plans to gradually roll it out during the next year to allow time for more fine tuning.