By Young Entrepreneur Council, Contributor
By now, we’ve all heard about Facebook’s Graph Search announcement. Does this mean I’ll finally be living in a utopian society where social media will guide my searches based on what my Facebook friends think about products? Will I finally be living a life of bliss when my online connections serve as my life compass? …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Facebook has a new tool that lets you search for people based on their Facebook activity. It’s called Graph Search, and it’s gradually becoming available to every Facebook user on the planet. Once you have access—there’s a waiting list—you’ll be able to use it to find information such as restaurants your friends have liked, old photos containing specific family members, and alumni from your alma mater who live near your next vacation spot.
It promises to be a powerful tool for analyzing the personal data many people publish on Facebook—and that means you need to know how it works and how to prevent it from accessing data you’d prefer to keep private.
The Graph Search tool is a work in progress and the service isn’t available to all Facebook users yet, but it still represents a good opportunity to revisit your Facebook privacy settings. To get there, log in to Facebook, click the blue cog icon in the top-right corner, and select Privacy Settings. From here, you can monitor who can see your Facebook updates and retroactively set limits on your past posts—a handy trick for quickly locking down your Facebook page.
You should also browse through your Activity Log to get an idea of how much Facebook records (hint: pretty much everything you do) and who has access to that data. I was surprised to discover that Facebook has been logging my search queries for months, making it easy for anyone to see whose profiles I look at (rather than clicking and sorting through my friends list for someone, I often just type a name into the search field and go from there).
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
Facebook is changing. Again.
Last year, the social media powerhouse rolled out Timeline, a feature that set off a stream of concerns about privacy as it became easier than ever for visitors to scroll through years of Facebook posts. For businesses, though, Facebook Graph Search is likely to bring consumers. Rather than having to wait for a customer to recommend your company, you may find that searches are naturally leading new customers directly to your Facebook Page.
What is Graph Search?
Before we can dive into what Facebook Graph Search can do for your small business, it’s important first to understand what it is. While other social media sites encourage users to connect with other users, Facebook has been a closed site. Finding others who share your interests has been impossible, with Facebook’s search limited to people, places, and things. Type the word “restaurant” into the search box, and you’ll receive a list of pages on the site related to restaurants.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
By Matt Miller, Contributor A short film called “Online Now” appeared on the Internet last year. The film consists of a series of quick vignettes which create pretty great interpretation of how technology has invaded our lives. One of the scenes shows a young guy using Facebook to learn about a girl who recently went from “In a Relationship” to “Single”. By browsing her likes and interests he fakes a photo, learns about a band she’s into and ends up going on a date with her – all through Facebook. Had the new Facebook Graph Search been around when the filmmakers wrote this scene, it would have played out a little bit different.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Facebook’s Graph Search is the future of search. Even before Google was a verb, the search engine Holy Grail was to deliver you the most relevant search results despite not knowing who you were and what exactly you were looking for. Now Facebook can stop guessing who you are—because it already knows you—and start serving up hyper-personalized answers tailored to you and based on the Facebook social universe.
Search leaders haven’t been sitting idly by. Google’s own hyper-personal search tool is called Google Now and landed on desktop search just last month. Microsoft’s Bing has woven what it calls Social Search deep into its search engine. The hyper-personal search race has already been sparked; Facebook’s Graph Search ignites the revolution.
[[See also “Hands on with Facebook Graph Search: Interesting, but disappointing”]]
Personalized search is nothing new. We’ve gotten whiffs of the benefits of personalized search over time. Netflix has spent years honing its recommendation engine designed to keep you coming back to watch more movies and TV shows. Amazon recommends books, music, and numerous other products based on your past purchases. Pandora developed an algorithm that can generate playlists based on songs you tell it you like.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
Although Facebook’s Graph Search isn’t available to most users yet, once it rolls out more broadly there won’t be any escaping it.
That’s because, as Quartz points out, Facebook removed the capability to opt out of searches last month, before it announced the new feature. Sam Lessin, a Facebook product manager, confirmed the change to The New York Times in December, claiming that only “a single-digit percentage of users” had opted out. (Of course, with 1 billion users, that still translates to at least 10 million people.)
Graph Search is an overhaul of Facebook’s existing search box. It lets people type in naturally-phrased queries such as “Restaurants my friends like” and “Photos of people from college,” and see personalized results.
Graph Search respects the user’s existing privacy settings. So, for example, if only your friends can see your photos, no one else will be able to see those photos in their own searches. In other words, Graph Search isn’t showing any information that people otherwise wouldn’t be able to see.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
By Kern Lewis, Contributor The BIG NEWS in online marketing circles this week has been Facebook’s introduction of their Graph Search service.They are still refining the underlying code and winkling out the bugs. Down the road, you will want to know more about Facebook Graph Search but, for most businesses my advice may stay the same: Invest the time to keep your Facebook page active, interesting and well-liked, and “they” will come.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a plan this week to make all of the Likes, check-ins, and photo tags on Facebook actually mean something with the launch of Graph Search. The service is in early beta, and is not yet widely available, but the concept has some valuable implications for businesses on Facebook.
Here are three ways that small and medium businesses can benefit from Facebook Graph Search:
1. Engagement
Facebook is already the online destination where users spend the most time. One report from May of 2012 suggests that users spend nearly 8 hours per month on average perusing Facebook—more than double the amount of time spent on the next closest rival. Facebook also has nearly a billion registered users, and boasts around 150 million unique visitors per month.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
By Forrester Research, Contributor I followed along as Facebook made its ‘big announcement’ today, and found myself torn. I think that Facebook Graph Search is: Nate Elliott Really important. It’s important because it makes Facebook a more usable and useful site. Facebook’s current on-site search tool is pretty terrible — it’s almost impossible to find the people […]
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Facebook shook the tech world foundation a bit with the announcement of the Graph Search capability. Users are anxious for a chance to play with the new feature, and attackers are looking forward to this potent new weapon…I mean tool, as well.
In a nutshell, Facebook Graph Search is a contextual search engine that allows you to find things based on relationships and context—basically drawing from the limitless pool of Likes, tags, and check-ins posted by a billion Facebook members.
From a search perspective, Graph Search seems like a very powerful tool—something that makes search more personally relevant, and a concept that should have Google worried a bit. You can search based on people, places, friends, and interests. For example, you can do a search for “friends who like The Beatles and live in Chicago,” or “Italian restaurants my friends have visited nearby.”
However, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword as well. Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle, says, “The new Facebook Graph Search is a phishers’ dream come true. It takes the micro targeting capabilities that have been available to online advertisers for years and puts them into the hands of cyber criminals.”
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
By Patrick Moorhead, Contributor Today, Facebook announced Graph Search, the ability for users to more easily search for information related to their social graph. Users could always search, but the results were typically line items that required a second click to access to see if the results were relevant. Graph Search adds many capabilities, adding […]
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
By Kevin Spak 
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
