After the suspense about the possible announcements to be made at yesterday’s Facebook event, it was finally revealed that it was the Graph Search which was going to be the highlight of the day. Talking about how it was different from conventional web search engines, Mark Zuckerberg said, “Web search is designed to take any open-ended query and give you links that might have answers. Linking things together based on things that you’re interested in is a “very hard technical problem.” Graph Search is designed to give answers to people about the things that are the most relevant to them and each search result depends on the person who is doing the search and is unique to each person. One can search for people, places, interests (like music, movies, games etc.) by typing out a query that filters the result according to combination of these. 
The interface looks very conventional and Facebook-like, where the top blue menu bar has been replaced with a universal search bar that clearly makes it look like the most important element on the page. When users type a query like “People who like cricket and live in Delhi”, it shows you the results based on your network and which are decidedly relevant to you. The possibilities of the kind of queries that can be made are endless, ranging from simple ones that list out “Music my friends like” to a complex combination of various fields. 
Another major development is the deeper integration of Bing search results into this product, which gives you web search results within the Facebook Graph Search interface. Mark Zuckerberg also mentioned that Instagram integration is also something that they are looking forward to in the near future. But this also brings up questions about privacy, which are admittedly answered by the fact that only the data that has already been shared with the current user will be used for populating these search results. This announcement however fell short of impressing the investors, resulting in the fact that Facebook shares fell by more than 3 percent later in the day. The Graph Search feature is still in very limited beta though, and those interested can join the wait-list by signing up here.
