Facebook is giving Graph Search, its natural language search engine, to overseas audiences for the first time. The social network said Tuesday that it will gradually roll out Graph Search to members in the UK.
First introduced in January, Graph Search is designed to make every piece of Facebook content shared by you or with you, including items posted publicly, accessible through natural language queries such as "photos of my friends in Paris" or "friends of friends who like football."
The engine was initially limited to queries around people, photos, places, and interests, but at the end of September, Facebook began letting some members in the US search for status updates, photo captions, check-ins, and comments. The additional features are not yet available in the UK version.
The belated expanded release of Graph Search, which is only available to a small number of people using Facebook in UK British to start, hints at some of the complications in localizing the Facebook search experience.
Questions remain about whether the social network's 1.19 billion members will embrace Graph Search beyond just searching for Pages or people to friend, as they've been conditioned to do over the years. The search engine, which proffers open-ended possibilities in what you can uncover on Facebook, comes with a learning curve and its own special language