This week Facebook rolled out its controversial Graph Search feature to most of its U.S. users. It can be a useful way to find sources and stories related to your community, and gain insight to help you land advertisers and funders. And yes, it can be a little creepy too.

Graph Search is the updated Facebook search feature, enhanced with semantic capabilities to process "natural language" queries more easily. It's a way to find people and content posted to Facebook and the web, augmented by users' interconnected networks of friends -- and, of course, limited by individual user privacy settings. The process of using Graph Search is less about matching keywords and more like how the crew of the Starship Enterprise would ask a question of the ship's computer on Star Trek.

This can have a lot of implications for finding local people with certain connections or interests, or certain types of content. For instance, you can use Graph Search to identify your Facebook friends (or their friends, or public posts) who "like" a local event, such as a local rodeo. Or a place, such as a local park. Or a topic, such as a planned light rail route. You can also use Graph Search to find photos and other content, such as historic photos of your town.

You can also use Graph Search to find Facebook users according to their interests or other criteria -- which could be useful to spark interest and word-of-mouth recommendations for your coverage or projects. Over time, finding and cultivating the right connections and content via social media can help draw attention and support to your efforts.

Also, according to Search Engine Land, geographic relevance (apparently determined by the IP address through which you access Facebook when conducting your search) is baked into the results, making it easier to hone in on information from or about your local area.

Graph Search can also help you gather demographic information to help you pitch advertisers or funders. For instance, you can learn how many fans an organization has in your city, and their age and gender breakdown -- so you can assess whether the demographics of your audience might be a good match for their local marketing or promotion priorities.

Of course, Graph Search will be most useful if your community project has a strong and active Facebook presence. Graph Search can help you add compelling and specific links, content, tags, and context to your Facebook posts and comments. It also can help you draw in well-connected new friends and fans to your page. And consider being more open with your privacy settings -- the more public posts you make, the more visible you become via Graph Search.

Not surprisingly, a lot of Facebook users are creeped out by Graph Search. This week has seen a flurry of news stories advising Facebook users on how to tweak their privacy settings to limit which of their content and connections is findable via Graph Search, and to whom -- as well as coverage of Graph Search results that can be embarrassing or even present safety risks. Which means: If you contact someone who you've discovered via Graph Search, use care. They might not be pleased how you found them, or why.

So far Graph Search does not turn up results from the text of Facebook posts and comments -- but Facebook says they're working on that. Also, so far Graph Search is a bit clunky and regimented in terms of which queries yield good results. And -- a biggie -- it's not yet available on mobile devices. But expect Graph Search to grow more sophisticated and flexible quite quickly.

Graph Search is a big focus for Facebook, which has plans to position itself as a "discovery engine" rather than just a social media platform, with lots of implications for its long-term business strategy. Much of this shift is meant to serve advertisers and marketers -- but community news and information projects can also benefit from the same type of information and features. So if you start playing with Graph Search now, even in its relatively limited form, you'll probably be especially well positioned to make it a useful part of your business and editorial processes going forward.