Facebook's controversial new feature, Graph Search , made a splash when it was announced, but since then interest has waned as there are no more details and news.
The new feature is only available to a few people as a beta version that needs testing. But the available Facebook Graph Search testers aren't using it much or aren't using it properly. That's why Facebook has published a list of the most "popular" searches, or rather, a list of things Facebook wants you to search for.
The first way most new users start their searches with Graph Search is by typing in the name of a friend, or more specifically, photos of their friends.
One of Facebook's examples shows "Videos of my friends," or
"Photos of my friends before 2009," and so on.
Natural language queries make it easier to filter for just the photos you need, i.e. “Photos from the New York Times” or “underwater photography.”
Graph Search is also useful for travel planning, Facebook says, for example, finding hotels near where you plan to visit, ski resorts, or seeing places you've been before.
Finally, Graph Search can be used to discover new things, like “Videos from TV shows my friends liked” or “Apps my friends liked.”
Overall, this shows that while Facebook has created a pretty clever feature, users aren't used to using natural language for searches. We can of course blame 15 years of using Google for this.
