Facebook is a plant on its own. More than half of the world's population is making use of this social media platform and that opens up a new dimension of interaction among individuals.
A key feature of Facebook was the graph search. It facilitated people to connect with like-minded people based on their acquaintances and preferences. However, the Facebook we know today no longer uses the organic of the same search that was introduced initially.
So, what was exactly the Facebook graph search? Why is it not operational anymore? We answer everything. Take a look:
Graph search was Facebook’s very own embedded search engine. It allowed people to search for queries and functioned on an algorithm that allowed the engine to process natural queries and render computational results for them. Apart from their own network, Facebook relied on Microsoft’s Bing search engine to produce the relevant results. People could simply search for people around them, restaurants around them, single people to date using the graph search. It processed data from your friends and their network of friends, who you may or may not know to connect. Here are a few things you could find using a graph search:
-Restaurants that my friends go to in the city of Austin
-People in my locality who like pets
-Single men/women who formerly lived in California
These are just a few examples of the things that you could find on Facebook. This sounds quite informative and exhaustive but then, why did Facebook discontinue this feature? Let’s find out.
(Image Courtesy: Search Engine Land)
More on: The People You May Know Feature in Facebook
When you look at the aforementioned examples, you’ll feel that what you could do using a graph search was really incredible. After all, you could find like-minded people whose interest juxtaposed with yours, and that would allow you to connect with people that resemble you. However, in all this glory, the major glitch that the graph search had was the fact that it raised alarming concerns for people’s privacy. An individual’s profile was right in front of someone with malicious intent, and that puts many things in jeopardy. The major limitation to graph searches was the fact that users could not choose to opt out of being visible in results of the organic searches. This was a major concern of the privacy of billions of people. Their entire data was all over the internet, at anyone’s mercy.
It was primarily due to these privacy issues that Mark Zuckerberg decided to discontinue the graph search and also put in place more robust privacy settings.
Do you miss graph search? Let us know in the comments below!
(Featured Image Courtesy: The Telegraph)
12 Opinions
30 Opinions
48 Opinions
I miss Graph Search.