Analyzing the new Facebook graph search - geeky thoughts

       
         Since my exams just got over today I decided to procrastinate for the rest of the day  and which site better to do that than Facebook ? interestingly, as I opened Facebook I was greeted with a message that said " Explore the new graph search ".. and as any normal curious person would do I accepted the offer...

    The most immediate changes that I noticed were that now my notifications and messages buttons were on the right side of the screen and instead of Facebook logo and search bar there was just an icon and "search for people places and things" respectively , on further inspection I found out that the text was actually a pace holder that became the search box upon clicking and that the icon now took you to the home page just like the logo used to do ,but there still exists a home button on the right  which does not make sense to me .

         anyhow , on clicking "search for people , places and things" it automatically suggests things you might want to search for ,and also an option to take a tour , which i did take and the tour proceeded by typing in the name of the school i used to go to , then it told me that the new graph search allows users to use simple phrases to search for things , for example,

 friends who went to my school 

The results page looked like this (blurred intentionally) 

    on the left it shows people who meet the search criteria and some information about them and on the right there is a form titled " REFINE THIS SEARCH "  - where you can refine your search by using parameters like Gender,Relationship,Current City,Hometown,Former School etc. there is a small link on top of this form that says grid view, clicking which gives a grid view of the people who were in the list form in the left a moment ago...

the results page now looked like this (blurred intentionally) 

   There is also an option below the refine box to extend this search , which did not interest me much , but below that there was a shiny new button that said "Discover something new" , how could I resist that ?
turns out it just searches randomly for things that are related to your friends ,
a few searches it did for me include (but are not limited to ;) )

• Books liked by my friends
• Places that I visited -(why would i search that ?)
• Videos by pages that I like 
• People who are not my friends and are in a relationship with my friends
   (interesting way to find people to stalk )

      and i gave up there, the feature does promise to be a better tool for "Getting to know your friends " but it does raise a few privacy issues   than the previous search but user reaction is yet to be seen , as for me i might as well use it more than the previous search box (which never really found stuff for me) , But at that point I was too bored to continue ....

if you want to read up more on this topic you can always ask Me in the Comments or Google :)
that's it for now , Tweets by @PrashantM911 like us on facebook , comment and share !