Via Billboard.biz:

Graph Search, or Facebook Search as it is likely to become known, is a tool for finding information about places and friends through Facebook’s 1 trillion connections between people, places and things. It could disrupt location services like Yelp, whose stock tumbled as much as 8.6% over Tuesday and Wednesday following the debut of Graph Search, but doesn’t have much overlap with the information indexed by Google.

But Graph Search could end up being a fairly useful tool for music marketers to get a general sense of the likes and interests of a particular group of fans. As the Inside Facebook blog points out, the search tool provides an opportunity for businesses to conduct market research about specific groups of fans for free.

Here’s an example: You could search for “Bands liked by people who like Bruno Mars.” That might not be very helpful to marketers or executives trying to secure specific brand partnerships, but it would be very helpful to search for Bruno Mars fans that like certain consumer product brands, wireless carriers and alcoholic beverage companies (all are the types of companies to sponsor tours). Or the search could look for followers of a particular activity or interest. Graph Search will even narrow the search results down to specific cities (and, one would assume, countries).

Read more by clicking on this title.

I wonder if they’re also going to work with Grooveshark since numerous people here in the states use it.  Nonetheless, this is a noteworthy move by Facebook.  Check the full article here & some details below:

- In the left-hand column, where Facebook lists Photos, Friends, Places, Groups, Deals, Pages, and Games, you will find a new tab called Music. This tab will show up if a user has listened to music with one of Facebook’s partner music services.

- Clicking on this new tab will open a page called Music Dashboard.

- The Persistent Playback/Pause Button at the bottom of the Facebook page, where the “chat” icon is currently located, is like a quick snapshot and controller of the music experience. Mouse over it and you can see what is playing on whatever service you might be logged into using Facebook Connect. It also allows you to play or pause a track once you discover it on Facebook. It is also linked to the play buttons in the news feed.

- A page with snapshot of all the songs you have listened to on any specific service, and also your top tracks and the number of times you have listened to those tracks.

The Music Dashboard will have the following features:

1. Music Notifications: here you have notifications that show if your friends have listened to songs recommended by you or on your profile.

2. Recommended Songs: You can get a list of songs heard and recommended by your friends. You can also play them back by clicking the play icon.

3. Top Songs from friends.

4. Top Albums from friends, with cover art.

5. Recent listens from your friends.

6. In the upper-right corner there will be a “happening now” ticker that shows what is happening in your social and musical universe, including songs that your friends are playing. There is some talk that this “Happening Now ticker” would show-up all throughout your music experience and not just on the music dashboard.

ISH knows…this is a very interesting topic, especially w/ Facebook going public.  Nothing to overreact to but will be very interesting to see the long term trend.  Click here to read the whole article.

The 4 Theories:

1. Facebook has made as many friends as it can

2. People are sick of Facebook

3. This is just a temporary dip

4. Other social networks are on the rise

ISH knows…this bodes really well for Spotify’s presence & future success in the online streaming game.  Linking up w/ the most powerful social networking site is always a positive move.  I think this will also help them in hopefully getting their site/program to finally launch here in the states.  Especially since it will be a smooth transition onto the FB website that will make it easy for people to use & likely increase people’s desire to want to use it:

Facebook will place a Spotify icon in their news feed that will download the service’s software to users computers upon selecting. Once loaded, it will allow Facebook users to stream music with their friends, simultaneously, via Facebook, according to the story.