Facebook Graph Search launch: as it happened 19.22 Meanwhile, Ernest Doku of uSwitch points out that Graph Search will only be as reliable as the information people put into Facebook. Outdated information could render the search results meaningless. In terms of the evolution of Facebook, this feels like the logical next step. And for connection purposes, be that friendship or dating, it is useful and intuitive. But it's only as reliable and useful as the tags people use. Most of us don't regularly update our favourite films lists on Facebook, for example. 19.17 And with the event finishing, a few reactions are already beginning to pop up. Here's Jon Myers of Marin Software: Ultimately, Google and Facebook are both trying to solve similar problems and provide compelling solutions for their advertisers in the process, it's just that they are tackling the issue from opposite ends. Facebook is coming from a position of strength in social networking and building a search engine into that, whilst Google is building a social network into their core strength which is their search engine. 19.13 Another thing to note from the Steven Levy piece (see below) is that Graph Search is launching in English-only, at first. Just 45 per cent of Facebook's users understand that language. Although that is almost half a billion people, so not a number to be sniffed at. Meanwhile, in California, Zuckerberg is taking his last question. He says Instagram data won't be integrated at first but it's on the list of things they plan to add eventually. 19.10 Zuckerberg says Facebook has been working with Microsoft Bing on Graph Search "for months." He says he would "love to work with Google" but the issue is how quickly Google can index updates. If someone changes the privacy settings on a photo, for example, from public to private, Google can't index the change quickly enough. 19.01 Wired's Steven Levy has been following the development of Graph Search, it seems. His article about its how Facebook built it has just been published: In the weeks leading up to the launch, Facebook executives were still trying to come up with a name for the new product. They were hoping to stay away from the word search, to distinguish it from web search. Only a few days before the launch, one Facebook executive slipped and referred to it as "browse." But after hours of contortionism, they relented; nothing topped Graph Search. 18.56 Some of Zuckerberg's answers: no, Graph Search won't have an API; he doesn't consider it to be a business yet; and the initial roll out will be to just a few hundred thousand of Facebook's billions of members. 18.54 The Q&A with Zuckerberg has begun. Meanwhile, ZDNet's Jason Perlow is planning his own Graph Search terms: 18.50 If you search for things that are not part of Facebook's database then Graph Search will bring them in from elsewhere. Weather results, for example, will be provided by Microsoft's Bing search engine. Ultimately, Zuckerberg is playing down the idea that this is a threat to web search. He says: "I don't think people will start coming to Facebook to do web searches because of this." 18.48 And Mark Zuckerberg is back. He says: "This is just some really neat stuff. This is one of the coolest things we've done in a while. He re-emphasises that this is a beta, suggesting that not everything will work smoothly at first. In a major privacy move, Graph Search will also make it possible to untag photos in bulk. 18.44 The demos continue. One things for sure, finding embarrassing baby photos of your friends will now be much easier: 18.40 Facebook has put up its Graph Search page, complete with photos and demonstration videos. "The roll out is going to be slow so we can see how people use Graph Search and make improvements," the company says. If you want to be among the first to get it, you need to sign up to the waiting list. 18.37 Here's a Graph Search results page. On the right-hand side are options to refine the search results by various criteria, such as gender or location. 18.33 Photo search makes it possible to search on a range of criteria, such as "photos of my friends before 1990" or "photos I've liked." Graph Search will only search publicly available Facebook information - so there shouldn't be any privacy concerns. It means that it's possible to search for photos of, say, Berlin in 1989 and everything publicly available will be returned. It seems to understand natural language queries quite well too. 18.24 Search results are arranged by how closely connected you are, which means that everyone gets different results. If you're trying to track down that friend-of-a-friend who you met at a party, for example, you might search for ""People named Chris who are friends of Lars and went to Stanford." It can be useful for dating too: "friends of friends who are single men in San Francisco," is the example Facebook gives. 18.21 Graph Search lives in the blue bar at the top of the Facebook page. It has an auto suggest feature, similar to Google's search box. So if you type "friends who," for example, it will bring up the most common suggestions. It can do compound queries too, so it's possible to search for "friends who like Star Wars and Harry Potter." 18.18 Zuckerberg has handed over to Tom Stocky and Lars Rasmussen, two of the engineers behind Graph Search, for a live demonstration. 18.16 Christopher Williams, our man on the scene, says it looks fast and clever but it's hard to tell whether this is the service in action or just a video. 18.11 Facebook's tool is called "Graph Search." Zuckerberg is emphasising that this is not web search, like Google. "Graph search is designed to take a query and return the answer immediately and quickly," says Zuckerberg. He gives the example of asking it "Who are my friends in San Francisco?" and Graph Search returns the answers. He says that he thought it couldn't be done but it works. Ask Facebook for "photos of my friends in 2009" and it will find them. However, this is just an early beta that covers only people, places, photos and interests. 18.08 The event has begun. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is on stage talking about the importance of connecting people. But Facebook is a database, he says, and you should be able to search a database. It looks like, as expected, Facebook has been building a search tool 17.55 A late guess as to what Facebook will announce, via Amir Kurtovic on Twitter: 17.50 Telegraph Tech's representative, Christopher Williams, has arrived at Facebook's London office, where the event is being streamed live from California. Nothing to report yet but we'll keep you posted once the event gets underway. 17.45 Fifteen minutes to go. While we wait, news reaches me from the Netherlands about a group of friends who used Facebook to organise a snowball fight. More than a thousand people turned up after news spread across the social network and the whole thing, err, snowballed. Who says social media is a waste of time? Look how much fun they're having: 17.29 The problem with high profile launch events like this one is, as noted below, that they generate lots of anticipation. If you fail to meet the expectations you create then the event can backfire. Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch notes that Facebook's shares have been steadily rising over the last few months as the market becomes more comfortable with the social network. A flop today, however, could make the market jittery again. 17.18 In research carried out a year ago, digital marketing agency Greenlight suggested that Facebook could capture up to 50 per cent of the market with a move into search. That would be a staggering switch, given Google's dominance, but Greenlight suggests that a brand like Facebook could turn Google's least loyal users. Of course, that assumes that a Facebook search product would be a direct competitor to Google. It could just as easily be a Quora-style question and answer service using the enormous amount of data the social network has at its disposal. Of course, even that would have an impact on usage of Google. 17.07 While everyone has been thinking about Facebook, Myspace has crept back into the spotlight. The social network that was the place everyone hung out after Friendster and before Facebook is still alive and it's been redesigned. This time it's turned itself into an advert for Timberlake's new single: Timberlake and Myspace, eh? It's like 2003 all over again. 16.53 Search is the most likely subject for Facebook's event tonight and a smartphone is the least likely. But there are a couple of other possibilities. I've written about those and how technology companies are increasingly following Apple's model for new product launches. The technology industry is gradually embracing the Apple approach to launching a new product - develop in secret, build anticipation by holding a launch event and then make the big reveal in the glare of the world's media. For maximum impact, the new product should be available as soon as possible after the launch event. 16.48 More likely is that Facebook plans to launch something search related. Earlier today, gadget blog Pocket Lint reported that the social network was launching a search feature: Although exact details of how the new search engine will work remain unclear for now, we have been told that the social network is planning to launch a big new "search feature" on the site "very soon," one that will shake everything up. That would fit with what Facebook founder and chief executive said last September. He said Facebook was "pretty uniquely positioned" to make a search product and he already had a team working on it. Will today be the day that he shows off their work? 16.45 Facebook's invite started rumours that the social network was planning to launch a smartphone. That now seems unlikely because developing a smartphone from scratch and getting it ready to launch is a difficult thing to do in complete secrecy. We would expect to have seen some leaks from the supply chain or from mobile networks, if that were the case. 16.35 Good afternoon and welcome to our live coverage of Facebook's California event this evening. Last week, the social network sent out invites to ""Come and see what we're building." Just what Facebook plans to announce remains secret at the moment but we'll know in around 90 minutes time.