Facebook unveils new search feature

Jan 15 2013

Social media behemoth Facebook has announced at a "mystery event" that it is creating its own search engine.

Speaking from the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the service, dubbed Graph Search.

Zuckerberg, 28, stressed that the new product was "very, very different" to web search engines offered by other tech giants such as Google because it only looks for data on Facebook itself.

It will allow users to search for people, photos, places and other content that has already been shared on the social network.

The announcement came after fevered speculation over what would be unveiled at the "come see what we're building" presentation.

Some reports had suggested Facebook - which has one billion users worldwide - would be moving into hardware with a smartphone or tablet product of its own.