Facebook Graph Search now available to those who use US English

Facebook has finally launched the Graph Search for everybody. Well… almost everybody. Anybody using US English as their primary language can now use the Facebook Graph Search, which presents itself as a giant search bar on top of Facebook pages. Even if you use another form of English, such as UK, you can simply switch to US English if you want to take Graph Search out for a spin.

Graph Search essentially brings some changes in how Facebook searches for things. It lets you make more refined searches by using phrases. For example, find old friends or meet new people who share your interests by searching with phrases like, “My friends who live in my city,” “People from my hometown,” or “Friends of friends who live nearby and like playing tennis”.

Now unleashed on the world

The long period of time between announcement and roll-out of the Graph Search can be blamed on linguistics. The feature makes use of simple human language to access data from Facebook’s mine. Terms like “My friends who”, “Places where”, “Friends of friends” etc. require Facebook to deliver results with deadly accuracy – something it has not been able to achieve completely with Graph Search yet.

Facebook has also reminded us again about its new privacy policy, which essentially retires the “who can look up my timeline by name” setting from the privacy settings. It will be removed in the coming months. According to the statement by Facebook, “Now that people have had an opportunity to explore those tools, we are starting to retire this setting for the small percentage of people that use it.”