This post comes from our Social Media Channel sponsor Full Sail University.

Just a day ago (Jan 15th), Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg gathered major news media in his company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California to make a huge announcement for what he considers the next major “pillar of the Facebook ecosystem.” I’ve heard rumors and speculation surrounding the media event with talks of a possible smartphone from the social media giant or a redesign of their timeline feature. However, those rumors were quickly put to rest (for now) as Zuckerberg confirmed the inception of Graph Search – Facebook’s new feature that will allow you to perform searches based on their colossal database of what your friends have shared.

In the world of search, we are going to hear about as much about Facebook’s new Graph Search product (which no one really has to use but that hasn’t stopped the speculation about it) as we will about Lance Armstrong. If that doesn’t make you a bit queasy then you are a stronger person than I.

The only thing I see regarding this development from Facebook is that the company is now strong enough to do what Google does. That is, they can take a long term view and let this product develop and change over a long period of time rather than having to knock it out of the park right out of the gate.

About a week ago, Facebook teased the press with the announcement of an upcoming announcement. Many thought it would be the Facebook phone that they keep denying they’re making.

It wasn’t the phone. It was a new discovery engine they call Graph Search.

The “graph” is what Facebook calls the complex set of data and data relationships that are the basis for the network. Graph Search is the ability to search that data according to relationship.

On the lowest level it goes like this:

Instead of searching “trail running” as people other than me might do in a traditional search, a Graph Search query would be “My friends who like trail running.”