Facebook launches new search tool

Washington - Social media giant Facebook has unveiled a new tool -- Graph Search -- to enable users in conducting targeted searches for people, places, photos and interests on the site.

“You should theoretically be able to ask Facebook ‘Who are my friends who live in San Francisco?’ and Graph Search should be able to return an answer to you,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told reporters Tuesday.

Facebook’s Graph Search photo component is the first of its kind for the California- based tech company.

“Photos will be surfaced based on the query, and then based on the number of likes and comments,” said Lars Rasmussen, Facebook’s director of engineering. “For example, you can look up photos of friends taken in Paris, or even photos of friends taken in national parks,” he said.

Want Thai food in New York City? The new tool will let users see which friends have dined where, and which restaurants were “Liked” by friends.

And using natural language search terms such as “friends who like college football”, Graph Search is also able to comb through the billions of “Likes” to curate results, a tool that advertisers might find useful, experts said.

"You can only search for content that has been shared with you," Zuckerberg said, adding that a message will appear on users' Newsfeeds to remind them to review their privacy settings before the product begins to roll out this week.