Last night, Facebook announced its new search feature Graph Search which as pointed out by Mark Zuckerberg  “(It’s) not going to give you best possible results and links like a regular web search”. Further down in his keynote he said ”Graph Search is meant to answer very specific questions like ‘Who are my friends in San Francisco?”, still don’t get it? Watch this video.

The new search feature lets you search your social connections for Photos, People, Places and Interests. However, this will not shred your privacy settings. Only results that you have shared with friends, friends of friends, or the public, will be found by other people. Facebook has even dedicated 10 percent of its computing power just to the goal of ensuring privacy. There isn’t much to be worried about except for the old pictures you put on Facebook long back and forgot to change their privacy setting, its about time to take care of it.

Graph search might kickstart the much needed Artificial Intelligence in the current search systems. People might argue that sites like Wolfram Alpha already have this feature, but then again, its not your regular web search engine, is it? Its also stated as the Facebook’s return to its roots, graph search will help fulfill the company’s initial goal which is to forge connections between people. I do not see how much would I use it, but stalkers got a great new year gift from Facebook.

The feature is currently in beta and Facebook is gradually rolling it out quite slowly. If you want to try the graph search feature, join the waitlist here.