 Hey, this is Thomas Huston from The Verge and we're checking out Facebook's new Graph Search beta. It just launched today, it's slowly rolling out. And the first thing that you'll notice is that it's a pretty big visual redesign of the top bar up here. And so you have a universal search bar that's available across the site and over here your notifications which were formerly over here have been moved over here. And you have a couple tweaks on icon design. But really what the big news here today is completely new search. And so you can start out really simple and just search for restaurants nearby. And we're in New York. It's actually a little slow. It's definitely a lot slower than searching on Google. But you'll find pretty quickly just a lot of restaurants nearby. Over here you'll see there's a refine section so you can go in and say, you know, if you prefer you can look for brunch, you can look for a cafe, you can find a bar. So if you want to get a little more specific you can find bars nearby that my friends like. Click that. And now here's a list of bars that my friends have liked. And so it's not necessarily just restaurants. You can add a lot of modifiers. So you could say, let's say you want to find restaurants in California that Robert Scoble likes which is actually a search that you can do. And it'll pretty quickly bring these up. So it's not just bars and restaurants. You can also apply this to people and you can apply it to photos and quite a few other things. You can also search for friends at the verge younger than 25 which is pretty specific. It'll bring up a result. Friends that work at the verge that are under 25. Just a few of us. And so you could also find movies that my friends like and you get a list of movies that your friends have liked. And you can go in and you can refine, you can pull down to things that I've liked, just that your family has liked. And you can actually change the page type. So you can look for athletes my friends have liked, political views, regions, religion, all sorts of great places to get into arguments. So the other big announcement here today from Facebook is that Bing is fully integrated here for web searches as well. And so while a lot of this definitely highlights and definitely promotes searching within Facebook, it is possible to search back outside of that ecosystem and dive back into Bing. So for example if you're searching for burritos, it will slowly retrieve suggestions. And you can look for Mexican restaurants, you can look for restaurants in Minneapolis. There's a burrito interest but if you click down here on web search this will take you to Bing. And it gives you search results within Facebook from Bing. In case you somehow missed it, the entire Verge team was out in Las Vegas recently for the Consumer Electronics Show. And it would be great to be able to search for all of those pictures. So again if you haven't seen it before, the natural language search is pretty good. So you can say pictures of my coworkers in Las Vegas. It will pull up results. You can click tab and return and it opens up. And so if you dig into these you'll actually notice that many of these are pretty old. Zuckerberg said today that Instagram would eventually be added to this data but at the moment it's not. But that should help a lot. As far as availability you can sign up today to get on the waiting list. But Facebook says that it's going to be a pretty slow rollout. This is version one and Facebook is distinctly calling it a beta.
 Hey, this is Thomas Huston from The Verge and we're checking out Facebook's new Graph
 Search beta.
 It just launched today, it's slowly rolling out.
 And the first thing that you'll notice is that it's a pretty big visual redesign of
 the top bar up here.
 And so you have a universal search bar that's available across the site and over here your
 notifications which were formerly over here have been moved over here.
 And you have a couple tweaks on icon design.
 But really what the big news here today is completely new search.
 And so you can start out really simple and just search for restaurants nearby.
 And we're in New York.
 It's actually a little slow.
 It's definitely a lot slower than searching on Google.
 But you'll find pretty quickly just a lot of restaurants nearby.
 Over here you'll see there's a refine section so you can go in and say, you know, if you
 prefer you can look for brunch, you can look for a cafe, you can find a bar.
 So if you want to get a little more specific you can find bars nearby that my friends like.
 Click that.
 And now here's a list of bars that my friends have liked.
 And so it's not necessarily just restaurants.
 You can add a lot of modifiers.
 So you could say, let's say you want to find restaurants in California that Robert Scoble
 likes which is actually a search that you can do.
 And it'll pretty quickly bring these up.
 So it's not just bars and restaurants.
 You can also apply this to people and you can apply it to photos and quite a few other
 things.
 You can also search for friends at the verge younger than 25 which is pretty specific.
 It'll bring up a result.
 Friends that work at the verge that are under 25.
 Just a few of us.
 And so you could also find movies that my friends like and you get a list of movies
 that your friends have liked.
 And you can go in and you can refine, you can pull down to things that I've liked, just
 that your family has liked.
 And you can actually change the page type.
 So you can look for athletes my friends have liked, political views, regions, religion,
 all sorts of great places to get into arguments.
 So the other big announcement here today from Facebook is that Bing is fully integrated
 here for web searches as well.
 And so while a lot of this definitely highlights and definitely promotes searching within Facebook,
 it is possible to search back outside of that ecosystem and dive back into Bing.
 So for example if you're searching for burritos, it will slowly retrieve suggestions.
 And you can look for Mexican restaurants, you can look for restaurants in Minneapolis.
 There's a burrito interest but if you click down here on web search this will take you
 to Bing.
 And it gives you search results within Facebook from Bing.
 In case you somehow missed it, the entire Verge team was out in Las Vegas recently for
 the Consumer Electronics Show.
 And it would be great to be able to search for all of those pictures.
 So again if you haven't seen it before, the natural language search is pretty good.
 So you can say pictures of my coworkers in Las Vegas.
 It will pull up results.
 You can click tab and return and it opens up.
 And so if you dig into these you'll actually notice that many of these are pretty old.
 Zuckerberg said today that Instagram would eventually be added to this data but at the
 moment it's not.
 But that should help a lot.
 As far as availability you can sign up today to get on the waiting list.
 But Facebook says that it's going to be a pretty slow rollout.
 This is version one and Facebook is distinctly calling it a beta.