Facebook unveils new search tool 'Graph Search'

CALIFORNIA, USA: Facebook Inc introduced a new search tool on Tuesday that lets people trawl their network of friends to find everything from restaurants to movie recommendations, an improvement that's likely to increase competition with review websites like Yelp and potentially even Google Inc, according to a report on Reuters.

Graph Search marks the company's biggest foray into online search to date, though it displays only information within the walls of the social network rather than links to sites available across the Internet.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's 28-year-old founder and chief executive, said, "Graph search is designed to take a precise query and return to you the answer, not links to other places where you might get the answer. What you've seen today is a really different product from anything else that's out there."

Graph Search will be available at first only as a 'beta,' or trial, for just hundreds of thousands of its billion-plus users. It will let users browse mainly photographs, people, places and members' interests, said the report.

Facebook, which was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students, as of September 2012 has over one billion active users. More than half of them use Facebook on a mobile devices.