Facebook Graph Search recently made a huge splash on the search scene, allowing all Facebook users to mine data that is either public or visible to them via their friends. The result is that regular users now have access to all sorts of information about friends and strangers. Some of that information can be quite interesting or useful, while some of it can be downright scary.

It’s worth noting that graph search has the power to divulge your personal information quite rapidly to friends or strangers, so please do re-check your Facebook privacy specifically for this. Regardless of what you think of Facebook Graph Search, it seems here to stay. So, here’s a bunch of interesting things to search for that could make your life easier, a little bit stranger or just make you more enlightened.

Get Graph Search

For starters, if you don’t already have Facebook Graph Search enabled, you can sign up for it here. You may need to wait a little while before it’s enabled. Soon though, it will be rolled out for everyone.

Use Facebook As A Dating Site

Facebook’s graph search makes it really easy to search for single people near you. Most importantly, you can narrow that down to friends-of-friends who have similar interests to you. So, the next time you go to a party and see that particular person, you already know of at least one common interest – and that they’re single! This means that life for single people on Facebook just got a whole lot easier and creepier, depending on how you look at it.

Find Out Really Creepy Things About Your Friends

If you didn’t think searches like this could get really creepy and invasive, try searching for “My friends who are married and like prostitutes” or something equally crass. Luckily, my friends are either squeaky-clean or not silly enough to put that sort of information on Facebook.

Stalk High-Profile People

Have you ever wanted to know the sorts of things Mark Zuckerberg likes? I mean, it’s only fair that we take a look. Similarly, we could be searching for pages, places or more.

Since I don’t know any of Mark’s friends personally, all of these photos must be public ones. However, it’s still pretty interesting to take a peek. Flip that on its head, though, and you have a creepy way of stalking your friends and their friends – especially when you consider places check-ins. If that cute single person you found earlier has publicly shared their check-ins, you might easily learn their favourite coffee place, clubs and other haunts.

Research Your Travel Destinations

If you’re heading off for a holiday, why not check out which places your friends visited in those cities? You’ll get a quick overview of the must-see places, plus if you narrow it down to restaurants or clubs you might find some great places to spend some leisure time while you’re there.

Find Out About Your Workmates

If you’re struggling to find common topics to chat about around the water cooler, why not check out what the people you work with like to watch on TV? Or you could find out about movies they like, books, restaurants, hobbies, or whatever else takes your fancy. Perhaps if you’re preparing for a job interview you could do something similar with the new company.

Find Out More About Your Customers

There are dozens of useful searches you can do to check out what your customers like. For starters, why not see what other pages are liked by fans of your company’s page? And which pages are liked by people who like the top pages of that search?

But all that is very business-like. Why not check something fun instead? What movies do your fans like? What hobbies do they like? Just for interest, MakeUseOf fans seem to like photography, travelling and reading.

As you can see, with Facebook Graph Search it is now really important to ensure your privacy settings are set precisely as you wish. Please do take the time to read more on how to limit your exposure on Facebook.

Have you tried Facebook Graph Search yet? What are your favourite searches so far? Have you found a great way to make use of it?