Facebook just announced a brand new search feature that is meant to help users find information like specific people, photos, places, interests, and more. Since Facebook has collected massive amounts of data about its users and their activity, it has the potential to create a very useful tool for its users. But how do people feel about the possibilities of Facebook’s Graph Search?
Facebook Users
In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 84% of respondents said they currently have a Facebook account. 32% of those users said that they think it is already very easy to find specific information on Facebook. 55% of Facebook users said they think it is somewhat easy to find specific information on the site. 10% said they think it is somewhat difficult to find specific information on Facebook. And just 3% said they think it is very difficult to find specific information on Facebook.
Search Engines
Just 15% of Facebook users said they would definitely be interested in using a search engine type of function on the site to find specific information. 41% said they would probably be interested in using such a feature. 37% said they would probably not be interested. And 7% of Facebook users said they would definitely not be interested in using a Facebook search engine.
Since Facebook contains so much personal data, it can definitely cater results to each user individually. However, only 11% of overall respondents said they find it very helpful when search engines take personal data into account to personalize search results. 40% said they find this somewhat helpful. And 49% said they don’t like it when search engines use personal data to cater results to each user individually.
Search Privacy
Another issue people have with Graph Search is that it will make certain personal information more easily accessible to more people. 36% of Facebook users said they are very worried about the privacy of their information if Facebook makes searching for data easier. Another 47% said they are somewhat worried about privacy issues surrounding Graph Search. And just 18% said they are not worried about their privacy.
You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.
Photo Credit: Alex Schultz from Facebook at MozCon from Flickr
What do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.
Results were collected on January 21 via AYTM’s online survey panel.
