Facebook’s graph search is the launch of this search tool
an attempt to masks yet another intrusion into privacy?
Search grapghs seems to be heating up rapidly, after
Google’s lukewarm foray into the area, Facebook has announced a much more
flamboyant entry into the field more flamboyant entry into the field by
unveiling Facebook Graph Search. GB’s Graph Search is widely being touted as a general
upgrade above the present version of search, which allows for only the most
rudimentary of customizations.
Graph search will combine Google style natural language support
as well as interpret associative searches. When graph search goes online goes
online, you will be able to perform searches by typing sentences into the
search bar, such as “Friends who live in Texas” “Restaurants my friends like” “
Friends living in London who are fans of Apple” And receive results
accordingly.
While an improvement to Facebook’s search system has been
long awaited, the upgrade seems to be a double edged sword. Facebook is
notorious among the teach team here for playing fast and loose with the
unstated laws of customer privacy, often changing privacy rules to the
detriment of the consumer without giving them any kind of notice, and this case
is no exception.
Just before launching the graph search, Facebook declared
that it had removed the ability of users to hide their profiles from being
visible on Facebook search results. The company justified this decision by
saying that only a single digit percentage of users actually use the ‘hide from
search’ feature. Of course, for a social network with over a million people,
and up to a staggering 100 million, could be affected by this policy change.
