At a press conference at its California headquarters today, Facebook announced a major overhaul to the site's search feature. The new search, called Graph Search, leverages all of the knowledge Facebook has about you and your friends' connections, and could have significant implications for the way users navigate the site.
Graph Search is a whole new way to use Facebook. You can quickly get to any person, page or photo by typing a query into the new, prominent search bar that persists at the top of every Facebook page. The site will now reorient itself in real time to match whatever terms you type in.
The search can help you find very specific results thanks to all of the detailed information Facebook has on people and places. You can type in "Friends who like cooking who live in Brooklyn" or "Restaurants liked by friends from India" and quickly get results.
Graph Search only has access to data that people have shared with you or made public. For queries it can't answer, Web results will be provided care of Bing.
At the press conference, Mark Zuckerberg stressed that Graph Search was still in the early stages and it's currently only available in invite-only Beta form. You can sign up here and check out a video of it in action above.
[via Facebook]
