Facebook Now Allows Users to Search for Specific Posts

It can be frustrating when you can’t find a post that you’re desperately looking for—like that hilarious comment you made on one of your friend’s status updates, or that cute photo of a Chihuahua you know you saw. Finally, Facebook grants users the ability to do just that.

Facebook is now delivering its long overdue promise, and has updated Facebook Search. Users are now granted the ability to find not just pages and users, but also posts they have seen in the past. [See Figure 1]

Figure 1 (Source: Facebook Newsroom)

On a post shared in Facebook Newsroom on December 8, 2014, VP of Search Tom Stocky announced the release of the update. “You’ve given us a lot of feedback on the Graph Search beta. You’ve told us the most important thing is being able to find posts you’ve seen before, and now you can,” Stocky wrote. “With a quick search, you can get back to a fun video from your graduation, a news article you’ve been meaning to read, or photos from your friend’s wedding last summer.”

Following the principles of semantic search, users can take advantage of the update by typing in any part of the post they want to find in the search bar, and Facebook will browse through all the posts they’ve ever seen in the past to help them find it. However, with the results being “personalized and unique,” this new ability isn’t applicable to posts that are shared with the public. Instead, users can only search for posts shared within their network.

Stocky also mentioned that although they are releasing a new update for Facebook Search, users can still make use of Graph Search to look for posts using phrases like “My friends who work in Los Angeles,” or “Posts about The Voice by my friends”.

The update is available to all users using the U.S. English language setting and has begun its rollout on desktop computers. Additionally, with users saying they need “better search on [their] phone,” Facebook is letting them look for specific posts from their Facebook app on iOS devices.

How might marketers and businesses leverage this new update to Facebook Search? Post your response in the Comments section below.

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