Facebook ramps up social network search power

Facebook has ramped up its search capabilities at the world's leading social network in a budding challenge to Google, LinkedIn, Yelp and other Internet firms. The "graph search" feature launched in a test version allows Facebook members to delve into the vast amount of information on Facebook, which is not available on Web search engines such as Google. Facebook worked closely with Bing on the search feature that lets people get answers to queries such as "What songs do my friends like?" along with pulling in online information from the Microsoft search engine. "We expanded our relationship with Bing," Facebook engineer Tom Stocky said during a press event at the social network's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, the first major announcement since Facebook went public in May. "We worked closely with Bing to make Web search feel more a part of Facebook." A fledgling version of graph search designed to let Facebook members do natural language searches to find places, pictures, movies and more that their friends liked began rolling out in for US English language users on Tuesday. “We look at Facebook as a big social database," Mark Zuckerberg said. "Just like any database, you should be able to query it."