So I have the new Facebook Graph Search. It's currently in beta, but I added my name to the list and made the switch this week. Basically, Facebook upgraded their regular search and gave it a funny name.
You can still use it to find friends and pages, but now you can find friends using many more search criteria than you could before. Previously, you could only use name, then filter by cities, schools, or employers. Now you can use more specific search criteria that doesn't even have to include their name. In the same manner, you can use it to search for pages and photos, but you still can't find any status updates, which is unfortunate.
Keep in mind, that it still follows privacy settings. For example, my
interests are locked to friends only, so anyone searching "Men who live nearby and like Camping" would not be able to find me unless they are my friend. My birth year is private, so I am automatically filtered out of any sort of search that uses an age. Actually, the only thing that I have set to public is my gender, but they will have a hard time finding me using "Men who are not my friends."
Though nothing is public, My
relationship status is Friends of Friends, as is my current city and
hometown, so even if we weren't friends, if we had a mutual friend, then they would be able to find me with, "Single men who are friends of my friends from Utah."
Some other limitations is that you can't search using your friend lists (except for Facebook's default "My Family" and "My Close Friends"), and you can only narrow a search to a month, not a day or even a week, so like you can use "Photos of my friends this month" but not "Photos of my friends today."
So how useful is it? It is great for people who want to be found, since it opens up more ways to do so. It's also good for searching through your own friends. But keep in mind that realistically, most people don't "like" everything they are interested
in. Many people don't set their relationship status or their location.
A lot of people don't make public the year they were born. Understanding this can make your searches more useful.
Also keep in mind that just because someone made their information public, doesn't necessarily mean that they want to be found and contacted. I personally think most
people only set their privacy "public" on accident, but I suppose there's got to be some people that like attention from strangers. Just... send them a private message, probably shouldn't just go around friending random people you don't know.
