Facebook wants to let mobile users run keyword searches on friends' profiles

Facebook has finally realized that you might want to use your mobile device to dig back into content your friends have posted in the past. And it’s working on it.

The social network has rolled out a search feature to some of its mobile users that lets them run keyword searches on friends’ profiles and on pages they follow, Bloomberg reports.

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This might be a new test that the company is running. It’s certainly not surprising — or even completely new for Facebook. While Graph Search, Facebook’s enhanced search engine, was still a desktop-only toddler, the company announced it would support searches of posts and comments.

Then, this past January, the company started to roll out Graph Search on mobile, so this week’s new test is likely simply the latest test from the Graph Search team.

This capability, despite being mobile-only, could add some additional power to ad-targeting on Facebook. It would give advertisers an additional dimension of a user’s preferences and behavior. For example, if you search for “yoga pants Sally Smith” because you want to find the brand your friend Sally recommended last month, it could signal to advertisers that you are interested in yoga pants — cue the Lululemon ads.

Nevertheless, this will likely spur privacy concerns among users, although Facebook will only serve up results that are allowed by the user’s privacy permissions: The drunk picture you’re hiding from your mom won’t show up in her searches.

But just in case you’re worried, consult our handy guide on avoiding those Facebook disasters.