Happy Birthday: How Facebook is Getting ‘Wiser’

Happy Birthday: How Facebook is Getting ‘Wiser’

If there is one favour Facebook has done us over the years, it is making sure that we don’t forget the birthdays of our ‘friends’, even if we hardly remember their faces (save for some profile pictures). And Facebook also doesn’t let its birthday be a passé by making huge announcements every year. On the eve of its 9th birthday, things are only slightly different, slightly bigger, slightly game changing.

Mark Zuckerberg loves surprising us. He loves it to bits. And this time round, he typically went an extra mile. So let’s do a roundup of the two biggest announcement Facebook made moment-ify its 9th birthday.


Facebook Graph Search Tool:
 This is the latest weapon in Facebook’s arsenal. Taking Google head-on, Facebook has announced its search engine which would offer more options, not only in terms of numbers, but also how you can streamline your search by inputting any combination of keywords. The search is centred around your friends and friends of friends

Let’s try to explain it with some examples:

  • Put a query in Graph Search, “My friends who live in Manhattan”- and it will come up with specifically your friends who reside in the city at that moment. Thus, it lets you personalize your search
  • Search “Friends who like ‘Sweeney Todd’ and Inglorious Basterds’: with this query, you will get as a search result the list of friends who have liked the Facebook pages of these movies. Based on your Facebook connection with the particular friends (like, best friends, acquaintances, friends, etc) the results would be filtered accordingly. 
  • People looking to date folks in their Facebook circle, but not sure if they are single can take the help of Facebook search tool. Lets say, you are looking to date single men. Type in Graph Search, “Who are single men”. This query will list down the profiles of people in your friend list and in your friends’ friend list who are single. If you want to search for single men in your town, you can filter the search accordingly.

Facebook-Starbucks: Move over the traditional ‘Happy Birthday’ posts on your friend’s timeline, and go one step ahead and give them a gift – a virtual one. So next time Facebook notifies you about the birthday of one of your friends, it will also give you an option to buy them a gift. The button is introduced made so seamlessly in the whole frame, that you don’t have to go through extra step.

Mark Zuckerberg made sure that the lead up to Facebook’s 9th birthday wasn’t lacking in propah! Facebook has always denied itself visual frameworks, but made sure it delivers on the core riches – and unfailingly so. Here is wishing Facebook Happy Birthday and many more years of building connections.

Rohit Raina
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