A few weeks ago, along with privacy policy changes, Facebook removed the ability for its members to hide their profile from Facebook searches. Now, with the announcement of the new Graph Search feature, it's easy to see why.
Facebook's new Graph Search service, in its current form, is limited in scope as only a few people have the opportunity to use it in beta. But when it is made available to the general public, everything we knew is going to change. Facebook's Graph Search could be the next step in technology or another big flop, time will tell.
Currently, without Graph Search, your name will appear in search results for people who are either searching for you, your friends, or your friends' friends (especially when Graph Search is released). Up until a few weeks ago, you could block this feature from your profile settings.
Essentially, the public information of Facebook users is now much more common. Many people believe that there is a private life, not because there are privacy settings, but because they choose to protect their privacy through opacity, pseudonyms, etc.
Our personal lives, step by step, are starting to be revealed, and many times we have not chosen it. Once there was Google, then came Microsoft's Bing, but even these services give users the right to choose whether they want to show their profile in their results or not. (Anyone can send a message and remove the results). So imagine if they couldn't find you on Google and with a simple search in Graph Search your name was shown first.
We had mentioned in an earlier post about what the Internet's big sharks are really after, money and fame come second to the value of information. Facebook is entering the game head-on, and with a billion aces up its sleeve (the number of its users). The filing is now done with our consent and of course without any reaction.
Think about the possibility of closing your Facebook account... It's a bit difficult, isn't it?
