If Facebook new Graph Search is your Personal "Big Data" why Facebook's shares were flat at $30.10 in early trading on Wednesday?

Last Tuesday Facebook announced a new way to "navigate connections and make them more useful": Graph Search (beta version).

Graph Search will allow users to ask real time questions to find friends and information within the Facebook universe. Searches like “find friends of friends who live in New York and went to Stanford” would come back with anyone who fit the bill, provided that information had been cleared to share by the users.

Graph Search will appear as a bigger search bar at the top of each page. When you search for something, that search not only determines the set of results you get, but also serves as a title for the page. You can edit the title - and in doing so create your own custom view of the content you and your friends have shared on Facebook.

The first version of Graph Search focuses on four main areas -- people, photos, places, and interests.

• People: "friends who live in my city," "people from my hometown who like hiking," "friends of friends who have been to Yosemite National Park," "software engineers who live in San Francisco and like skiing," "people who like things I like," "people who like tennis and live nearby"
• Photos: "photos I like," "photos of my family," "photos of my friends before 1999," "photos of my friends taken in New York," "photos of the Eiffel Tower"
• Places: "restaurants in San Francisco," "cities visited by my family," "Indian restaurants liked by my friends from India," "tourist attractions in Italy visited by my friends," "restaurants in New York liked by chefs," "countries my friends have visited"
• Interests: "music my friends like," "movies liked by people who like movies I like," "languages my friends speak," "strategy games played by friends of my friends," "movies liked by people who are film directors," "books read by CEOs"

Forbes talks about your Personal "Big Data".

Differences with web search

Graph Search and web search are very different. Web search is designed to take a set of keywords (for example: "hip hop") and provide the best possible results that match those keywords. With Graph Search you combine phrases (for example: "my friends in New York who like Jay-Z") to get that set of people, places, photos or other content that's been shared on Facebook. We believe they have very different uses.

Another big difference from web search is that every piece of content on Facebook has its own audience, and most content isn't public. We've built Graph Search from the start with privacy in mind, and it respects the privacy and audience of each piece of content on Facebook. It makes finding new things much easier, but you can only see what you could already view elsewhere on Facebook.

Lack of a timeline for the possible launch of graph search on mobile devices + lacks the depth of review content = NO GOOGLE KILLER?

BofA Merrill Lynch analysts estimated Facebook could add $500 million in annual revenue if it can generate just one paid click per user per year, and raised its price target on the stock by $4 to $35.

Facebook's shares were flat at $30.10 in early trading on Wednesday. They have jumped about 50 percent since November to Tuesday's close after months of weakness following its bungled Nasdaq listing in May.

However, analysts at J.P. Morgan Securities said the lack of a timeline for the possible launch of graph search on mobile devices may weigh on the tool's prospects.

The success of the graph search, which will rely heavily on local information, depends on Facebook launching a mobile product, the analysts said. Half of all searches on mobile devices seek local information, according to Google.

Graph search also lacks the depth of review content of Yelp Inc, the analysts added.

Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser said monetization potential would be largely determined by Facebook's ability to generate a significant portion of search query share volumes and he expects that quantity to be relatively low.

"Consumers are likely to continue prioritizing other sources, i.e. Google. Advertisers would consequently only use search if they can, or are perceived to, satisfy their goals efficiently with Facebook," Wieser said.

NO GOOGLE KILLER

Analysts mostly agreed that Facebook's search tool was unlikely to challenge Google's dominance in web search at least in the near term.