Facebook today unveiled a few new tools with Social Graph leading the way as the most innovative and potentially the  most useful tool for recruiters from or on Facebook. Not buying it? 

Mark Zuckerberg said so himself "The system can locate social connections by experiences and interests, and will likely be very useful to recruiters" 

Is this the beginning of Facebook recognizing the value behind the talent market? Possibly, but I think this and future innovations from Facebook will be driven not by curiosity  rather the potential to monetize the market in unique ways. This is not a bad thing, afterall Facebook is a business and needs to make money.

So what is Social Graph?

Social Graph will allow users to do things like locate connections and friends that are interested in specific hobbies, who have specific interests, are friends that are in a specific location at a specific time. There are many ways in which this will indeed be useful, in fact watch the video on this post and you will learn how to find a new dentist. 

The tool has been over a year in the making and is not available across the network just yet. It's in beta, though it has rolled out to a few profiles.

How can this be useful to Recruiters?

I actually think this can be useful. I am not a huge Facebook fan for recruitment beyond attraction and opportunities to engage. The release of these features if used properly and assuming a few variables such as information sharing, privacy settings etc. remain open and "Hip" will be a great addition to Facebook and will make a potentially useful tool for sourcing.

Where to next? Will Facebook charge for recruiter access and premium search and graph features?

That's an interesting question. What are your thoughts?

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