Facebook Enhances Search Options

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Remember all those embarrassing posts from the early days of Facebook? When there was no messaging system and you and your friends just wrote on each other’s walls all day long? Well on Monday Facebook made it easier to find those posts. This change comes at the request of users demanding a better search tool. “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. 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,” said Tom Stocky, VP of Search at Facebook. Facebook suggests searching for “ice bucket challenge” as a test. If a bunch of videos of you and your friends dumping ice-cold water on your heads come up, then you have access to this new feature. Aside from finding old and embarrassing photos and posts, you can also find a recipe you saw on a friend’s wall but forgot to bookmark, or see all the photos from a friend’s wedding in one search. It’ll be interesting to see if this new post search will wind up influencing paid advertisements. According to the New York Times, Facebook has tested this concept by running ads against keywords in posts. In the future, brands could target users who have searched any keyword related to their business. With organic reach dropping and unpaid promotional posts no longer showing up  on news feeds, businesses will need all the advertising options they can get.