Zach Thoren

Facebook has added two huge features in 2013.

2013 has already been a big year for Facebook. In the span of a month, it has launched two brand new features. The first was its foray into search. It does not seek to directly compete with Google, but one might draw similarities between its effort and Google’s. What Facebook’s new “Graph Search” seeks to do is to make it easier for you to search the things, people, places, and likes that matter to you. It has made it easier than ever to find what matters and it has never been easier to creep on your friends. Creepiness and potential privacy issues aside, I’ve really enjoyed my interaction with the new Graph Search interface.

The second new item of 2013 was something that flew largely under my radar. This morning, for the first time, I noticed a “Reply” button as well as a number count of current replies underneath a comment on a post. For the lack of a better term, let’s call these “Threaded replies” under comments. This measure finally brings Facebook up to speed with other large other communities (see reddit, imgur). Gone are the days where you’ll have to start a comment with @SoAndSo blah blah blah. You can now reply directly to a comment and threads can sprout on multiple comments within comments. A quick Google search showed me that Facebook has been testing threaded comments and rolling them out gradually.

Do you have graph search or threaded comments yet? Are you concerned about Graph Search? Have you started a comment thread yet?