Facebook user's who have become frustrated with the site's archaic search feature will get to use an updated version that's designed to make it easier to find people, places and photographs on the site, according to ABC News.
The company unveiled the new search tool in January, but only made it available to a small portion of users as engineers continued to test it. Beginning on Monday, the new search feature, "Graph Search," will be available to everyone using Facebook with the setting on U.S. English.
Graph Search allows users to find people and places based on information from social circles. The search will use information such as geographic location, likes and mutual friends.
It ran into a problem in January when it became apparent the search went into too much detail, demonstrating how much information people share online, and allowing users to find out personal information about each other that could fall into the category of "TMI."
The results of this were posted on an online blog, Actual Facebook Graph Searches, which has a collection of results that range from "married people who like prostitutes" to "current employers of people who like racism." Both search terms yielded over 100 people.
Many people aren't aware of the amount of information they are sharing, and may not be doing it intentionally. People may click like on something and then forget about it, though the web site doesn't.
To address this problem, Facebook will notify users that it's "getting easier for people to find photos and other things you've shared with them" along with a reminder that they can check "who can see my stuff" under their privacy settings and change those settings according to their comfort level in sharing personal information.
"The goal is to avoid bad surprises," Nicky Jackson Colaco, the privacy and safety manager at Facebook, said. She stressed that the site "indexes information differently than we have ever been able to do before, in a really positive way."
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
