On Tuesday, Facebook announced its new feature called Graph Search, which “promises to transform its user experience, threaten its competitors, and torment privacy activists,” according to Wired. It allows users to “dive into the vast trove of stored information about them and their network of friends.” While it is fundamentally different from Web search, it also has the potential to transform it.

On Google, users can search the world’s public information. “Instead of a Google-like effort to help users find answers from a stitched-together corpus of all the world’s information, Facebook is helping them tap its vast, monolithic database to make better use of their ‘social graph,’ the term [CEO Mark] Zuckerberg uses to describe the network of one’s relationships with friends, acquaintances, favorite celebrities, and preferred brands,” notes Wired.

“People use search engines to answer questions,” said Zuckerberg. “But we can answer a set of questions that no one else can really answer. All those other services are indexing primarily public information, and stuff in Facebook isn’t out there in the world — it’s stuff that people share. There’s no real way to cut through the contents of what people are sharing, to fulfill big human needs about discovery, to find people you wouldn’t otherwise be connected with. And we thought we should do something about that. We’re the only service in the world that can do that.”

The product will roll out slowly to users and will be improved over time according to usage and response.

Lars Rasmussen, “an eyebrow-raising defector from Google,” is the man responsible for production of the Graph Search. “They told me the vision — let’s make everything searchable and discoverable,” he said. And it seems that he’s done it. As widespread use rolls out, the results will become clearer.

But as the feature rolls out, privacy concerns are likely to pop up as well. “For some people, though, Graph Search might be a fear-inducing experience,” notes the article. Those who are already wary of Facebook for its privacy practices might chafe at the prospect of having their faces and personal information pop up whenever someone searches for ‘single women near me.’”

To address such inevitable concerns, Sam Lessin, a director of product at Facebook, says the company will offer easier-to-use privacy settings that will create a product respectful of the user-imposed restrictions.

And because search advertising is an income-generator on the Web, it is believed Facebook will do well in that department. It hasn’t announced any ad-related news as of yet, though.