By now you may have heard about Facebook’s Graph Search (if not, read about Facebook Graph Search here). And you may or may not already have Facebook’s Graph Search, as Facebook is rolling it out slowly across their membership. If you don’t already have it (or have it but have not yet dived into it), here is an illustrated tour – or, really, an exposé – of Facebook Graph Search, explained in pictures.
You will know that your Facebook account has had Graph Search turned on by this announcement suddenly showing up at the top of your page:
Note that you have to click “Turn On Graph Search” to enable it.
After turning Graph Search on, you will be offered something of a tutorial directly on Facebook:
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Now, this is interesting – when we clicked on “Take a Tour”, Facebook automatically filled in this search term for us:
Sure, maybe the “Stanford Law School” makes sense as a search term (as it’s my alma mater), but isn’t it just a tad creepy to have it made so obvious that you can search for “my friends who go to Stanford Law School”? Ok, maybe that’s not that creepy – but keep in mind you can substitute just about anything for “Stanford Law School”, like “My friends who go to Wicked Grounds” – or, even – “people who are not my friends who have been to Wicked Grounds” (which turns up an interesting list of people).
Here are some basic searches you can do – but it really gets interesting further down:
The Facebook Graph Search system offers plain English searches:
Here’s the information you will get about each person who is turned up by your Graph Search:
But it’s in the refining of Graph Searches that things get really creepy.
As has been so-often said, a picture is worth a thousand words…so, take a gander at all of the different things on which you can search, and in which groups of people. Remember that by definition, “people who are not my friends” means the entire Facebook population. A marketer’s dream? You betcha! A scammer’s wet dream? Oh yeah.
But wait..there’s more…
And then, after you find the people:
So, that’s the basics of Facebook Graph Search.
What do you guys think of this newest invasion of your privacy?
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