6 Cool Uses For Facebook’s Graph Search

Graph search is the latest feature from social networking giant Facebook. Essentially, this tool allows users to easily connect with people who share similar interests, as well as making it easier to explore the uploaded photos of your friends. Initially, Graph Search can seem a little confusing to those unfamiliar with the concept, but there are a range of interesting ways you can get the most out of it.

Finding Mutual Friends

Facebook already has tools in place for identifying people who you may know through people you are friends with. However, graph search makes this process much easier, faster and more straight forward. You can simply type in “[Friends name]’s friends who are also my friends” and instantly, all the mutual friends you share with that specific person are listed.

Fan research

Marketers can use Graph Search to their advantage by finding out a range of information about their fans, such as their tastes in movies, music, sports, holiday destinations and so forth, which can provide useful information for companies wishing to alter their services to specifically suit their fanbase. This can also be used to find out information about rivals and competitors who are on Facebook.

Networking

Users can enter searches to find out people who may go to a certain university, or work at a certain company or in a certain field. The detail of the searches available is immense – you can even search by the specific job title, and then perhaps use this information to message relevant people in order to find out more about the job in question, or ask for an introduction to senior members. The ability to combine searches is fantastic, for example you could search “People who work at [Company X] who share common interests as mine” to get really specific.

Recommendations based on what your friends like

By searching phrases such as “Movies my friends like”, you can instantly find out what kind of tastes your Facebook friends have in movies, music, books and so forth, and obtain some great recommendations from it. As mentioned earlier, the searches can combine several different elements and be very specific. For example, if you wanted to see what kind of interests your work colleagues had, you could search “Movies my friends who work at [My Company] like”, or if you wanted to see who supports the same football team as you you could search “Friends who work at [My Company] who support [Team X].” As you can see, it can get pretty creative and you can learn quite a lot about people.

Finding new friends

Graph search is also a great way to find people who you may know but aren’t currently friends with on Facebook, or to simply find people with similar interests to yourself. You could search something like “People at [My Company] who I am not friends with”, and from the list of people you may be able to identify some faces who you’ve met before and had a chat with but never gotten the chance to know properly. You can get more detailed and search something like “Friends of my friends who are between 20 and 25 years old and live in [My Town]”.

Finding photos with ease

There’s no doubt that photos are one of the most important and attractive parts of the Facebook experience. With Graph search, you can search for memorable photos of you and your friends by description, without having to manually scroll through thousands of tagged photos. For example you can simply search “Photos of me and my friends taken at [Location X] in August 2012” and list all the specific pictures you are looking for.

About the Author:

Sarah Roberts is a PR executive for Octopus-ims, a leading provider of Sussex internet marketing. She enjoys fashion on her days off when she is not updating twitter and facebook as part of her ongoing social media strategies.