SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook Inc. on Tuesday introduced a tool for searching information posted to its social network of more than 1 billion users, seeking to improve features to attract more users and advertisers.
The device called Graph Search, which lets users seek people, photos and places, doesn’t look for Web-based content, Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said at the company’s Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters. He showed how the service can also be used by recruiters to find potential hires, as well as by members for discovering people to date.
Zuckerberg is adding services to step up revenue growth and shake off the concerns that the company doesn’t know how to make money from its user base.
While Facebook stock has rebounded from a record intraday low of $17.55 on Sept. 4, the company is still in the early stages of generating revenue from ads placed on mobile devices.
Facebook shares fell less than 1 percent to $30.75. Google Inc. shares rose after Facebook said that the new product wouldn’t search the Web. LinkedIn Corp. and Monster Worldwide Inc. slipped amid speculation that Facebook’s job-search capabilities might pose a threat to similar features on their own sites.
The new search feature is designed to promote the discovery of new friends on the network, Zuckerberg said. The new feature is being rolled out as a beta, or test mode, to a limited number of users, and it’s designed to protect user privacy, Facebook said.