Introduction to Facebook Graph Search, the interface as well as the concept of social graph .

1. twitter.com/danishctc
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www.mindfiresolutions.com

2. If you haven‟t already got it, get ready for some radical changes Facebook is coming up with. Apart from
RESPONSIVE UI PERSONALIZED FEEDS
graph search which has already made news, Facebook is also enhancing its user interface, in terms of both
design as well as features. The new UI is apparently designed to reduce clutter and provide personalized feeds.
With personalized feeds you can categorize and most likely prioritize how you receive updates of different
groups or lists of friends. Now that may not sound much but these feeds are not only about your Facebook
friends, people you follow and brands, personalized feeds would include more than people and brands, feeds
can set up for social objects too. A photo feed would let you view only photos from your friends and pages, a
music feed would bring to you music according to your preferences - music shared by your friends, tracks
from your favorite artists ... Check out Facebook News Feed
From preview videos it seems Facebook is more than simply adapting to the radical web designing trend
called responsive web design, simply speaking, web design done keeping in mind the fact that the web page is
rendered correctly not only on desktop but also on mobile devices. In fact, the primary target for web
designers now are mobile devices rather than desktops. However, the changes in UI also reflect the new
functionalities Facebook is coming up with, especially, personalized feeds and a new way to search for
information , which has been called Social Semantic Search Engine.

3. My Facebook account is yet to see any of the latest enhancements but one of my friend has been given the
graph search feature which also includes some user interface changes. So while I have to wait for a while for
THE CONCEPT OF GRAPH SEARCH
the new user interface, I did get a sneak peek of graph search through my friend whose screenshots I have
used in this presentation.
Semantic Search Engine Social Search Engine
Graph search has been heralded as a semantic search
Social search is based on the concept of retrieving
engine because unlike traditional search engines, it
does not take a keyword or string-based wildcard information from the data generated users interacting
search mechanism in which algorithm matches with each other. A social object is any context on
characters and other factors to provide relevant which more than one user act. It can be a web page , a
results but is otherwise bereft of any meaning. picture, event and anything that connects users.
Semantic search meant to search words and phrases Because the big data Facebook mines to derive
based on their corresponding meaning. meaning originates in users‟ online interaction.
However, Graph search is not the Semantic However, on the web the scope of interaction is lesser
Web that Sir Tim Berners-Lee and W3C have been and related to specific acts only , the collaborative
working towards. This Semantic search is based not data is called social object.
on structured data but on social objects and activities
that constitute the Social Graph or the structural So currently , Graph search is available for a specific
foundation of Facebook ecosystem number of social objects only (for users, developers
can make custom objects.)

4. SOCIAL GRAPH VS INTEREST GRAPH
The reason this is called graph search, is that the algorithm searches for 'within your social graph‟. Social
graph is a depiction of personal relations of users . A similar concept, interest graph visually depicts specific
interests which link users together.
Social Graph Interest Graph
Social graph represents relationship between individuals, the Interest graphs are graphical representation of things and activities
context, whether object or gesture, forms part of the network but (physical, digital, virtual) that form the commonality between a
minor part. group of users. The basic difference is that unlike Social Graph, in
Interest Graph, the context is represented as primary node.

5. FACEBOOK SOCIAL GRAPH
Facebook combines the social graph as well as interest graph of users to access a treasure of user data.
which can help predict what would be the what the user would chose in a given situation. If you have any
knowledge on contextual ads on web (Google‟s major source of revenue) work, you would be aware of the
benefits one can reap knowing a user‟s preferences in such detail.
Facebook Graph
Facebook graph attempts to proceed more on the lines of natural language paradigms and borrows the concept of
“noun” and “verb” from grammar terminology to derive semantics. The entities (noun), both users and social
objects are represented as nodes while the edge or the link connecting the two nodes represents the action or
relationship.
Social Object
Social object is any context that forms the basis of interactions between two or more users. For instance a
photo, video , link or just about anything that leads users to interact by their opinion about the object, is a social
object. (Think about it , in physical world too, when you talk with some body, you talk about “something”)
video
Jane‟s
In the following illustration John and Jane are users while the video is a social object.
It is important here to note that both users and social objects have metadata
assigned to them. For uses‟ the personal details such as name, age, profession John
etc are metadata , for social objects, if not explicitly provided, the object‟s
defining attributes can be taken as its metadata. Jane

6. SOCIAL OBJECT
Coming back to Graph , this metadata can be useful when applied along with
video
Jane‟s
an action type , forming relationships between multiple users and social object.
At a very fundamental level, user‟s metadata determines and validates identity
while metadata of the social object helps identify interests. John
On Facebook platform “like” is an action type associating John with the
video shared by Jane, an association that can lead to finding a lot of John‟s Jane
preferences.
Graph search algorithm may or may not take them into account but here are
few assumptions I can make based on this associations such as
(i) John and Jane have something in common
(ii) John may like other videos which are similar to this one.
(iii) Friends of Jane who like this video have something in common with
John and so on …
(Please remember these are some examples I have come up with, I am not aware how exactly Facebook
interprets these relationships)
Of course a single object may not help that much but the fact is, by simply using Facebook every day
we are creating connections like these, in hundreds.

7. FACEBOOK GRAPH AND SUPPORTING DEVICES
Facebook is thus a collection of user identities and their corresponding interests accessible from different
devices such as mobile as well as desktop computers
• Tablet • Mobile
•PC
• Laptop

8. OPEN GRAPH API
However, Facebook‟s ambition goes much beyond its own website only. Graph API was introduced to allow
website owners use Facebook‟s social objects on their own website thus allowing users to interact with
content more meaningfully and at the same time enrich Facebook‟s data set .
Diagram representing the web, each node represents a website, Open Graph icon indicates websites
Objects & Actions
that have Open Graph API integrated and are thus a part of Facebook world
•Social objects are similar to
what „nouns„ are in
grammar.
•Actions are verbs such as
“like”, “read” , “listen”
User Action Object
• User • Read • Book

9. INTRODUCING GRAPH SEARCH
Facebook user interface enhancement as well as social semantic search engine are neither rolled out fully nor
do they seem to have been implemented completely. The information provided should help understand what
kind of changes Facebook has in store. As I said in the beginning, my Facebook account doesn‟t have Graph
Search or User Interface enhancement yet but one of my friends has and I will just navigate through some of
the interesting features and include screenshots.
Social Network

10. Logging In
GRAPH SEARCH
If you log in to Facebook the first time the Graph search feature has been enabled , you would find the
interface slightly different. The search box and icon have been moved to the left side of the screen (and of
course it offers a tour to introduce you to Graph search) .
You can search for people, places and things
Graph Search
Searching
There are three distinctive features that caught my attention-
1. You can search by typing in sentences instead of keywords for e.g “my friends who live in India”
2. As you type the search query Facebook auto-suggests not synonyms but similar sentences.

11. NEW INTERFACE
The new interface lets you navigate across ,mini profiles, photos etc without leaving the page
Navigate within the category My friends

12. GRAPH SEARCH – FIND FRIENDS
3. Since each search category has its own multiple sub-categories, selecting a parent category places
you on the parent category level and the sub-categories are made available.
What you are really doing is asking a very
specific question and Facebook search aims to
return you the most relevant answer(s) . This is
what Semantic Search is about, the search
engine seems to understand your question!
Of course, the search would be conducted
within Facebook‟s dataset but then , with more
than a billion users, there are a lot of answers
to be obtained.
Clicking on “My Friends who live in India” will load a list of friends but unlike earlier, the picture and
information are displayed more prominently because of the design changes.

13. Search results for “friends who live in India”
FRIEND LIST
This is not all. You can find more information by exploring the additional option given on the lower right
column of the page (shown in the next image )

14. EXTEND SEARCH
More information, including photographs and information in general can be retrieved using options given in the
right column.

15. GRAPH SEARCH
Since categorization has been done in hierarchical manner, Facebook lets you dig deeper progressively
narrowing down the search data and thus raising the probability of finding the search object with greater
accuracy
My friends Friends of my friends
Friends of my friends who live in a particular city
Friends of my friends who are from particular city and live in another or same

16. REFINE SEARCH
Refining search by allowing users to search and find nearly everyone on Facebook traditional way. Anyone
who has used chat tools such s ICQ, Yahoo Messenger and the like would be familiar with this search patterns
. The only addition here is the social object “Friendship”.
Multiple social objects can be combined to narrow search criterion. The
screen shot above demonstrates search including 2 Friendship objects.

17. REFINE SEARCH
Graph search doesn‟t just aim to make finding people as accurately as possible but also enables users to
discover photos, places, music and activities through social search.
The screenshot above shows users who are friends of Anand Misra as well as friends of at least one
more friend. It also displays other social objects such as photos, music, places etc that are similarly
related.

18. REFINE SEARCH
To explore more we need to return to the main menu by clicking on the Facebook icon.
Then after clicking in search box, select “photos of my friends” from the drop down menu this time.

19. MARKET SUMMARY ANALYSIS
Set of photos of friends
Photos of only those friends who live in Cuttack
(Subset)

20. SEARCH PHOTO
Graph search also allows you to search for photos using one or more social objects such as “friendship”,
“place” etc. Facebook happens to be the largest repository of photos online and if you have a large network
retrieving only sets of photos you‟d be interested in would be difficult. With Graph search this is definitely
going to be much easier and fun.

21. SEARCH PHOTO
As apparent from screen shot below, the only person auto-suggested was Lezlie Tripathy* It was surprising
because the friend whose account this is, is not friends with Lezlie Tripathy, so I assume it is her popularity
on social media, abundance of photos and sizeable number of mutual friends that ranks her higher on social
graph.
* Lezlie is an Odia model, actress, poet, social worker on my Facebook friends list but haven’t really interacted much and
of course don’t have any photograph; the search would return 0 result.

22. SEARCH PLACE
Although Facebook Places did not turn out as expected, it still offers several search options.

23. Search For Places Tagged By Friends
SEARCH TAGGED PLACES
The places your friends have checked in before is listed as shown below
Further refining
this search you
can really find
places of interest
in vicinity

24. Place Search
SEARCH PHOTO
You can even search for specific public places nearby, in this case, a restaurant.

25. Dig Deeper To Search for Accurate Information
SEARCH PHOTO
Let‟s dig deeper and search for cafes in the locality.

26. Other Social Objects
OTHER SOCIAL OBJRCTS
Similarly, you can not only search for things like music, movies, TV shows, books , others can view your
preference in each of these. In the new layout the left column of your profile now includes your preferences in
each of these.

27. ABOUT
Concluding
That‟s for now, once the features are rolled out fully I might upload an updated presentation
but only if it turns out way different than it seems to be now.
About Me
Danish Ahmed
Works at Mindfire Solutions
Blog
Website

28. Disclaimer
Views and opinion expressed herein are my own and do not reflect
that of my employer or any other person or entity. I have tried to
take permission for most of the images used. However, if you find
anything objectionable, do let me know, I will address the issue as
soon as possible.