Did they have access to this, or did they have access to "show my ad to everyone who matches this query" ?

I don't see why Facebook would allow advertisers to build databases of people when they can just force them to go through their own tool and keep people anonymous, like Google does.

Also, this is free, as opposed to advertising tools, which broadens the audience quite a lot.

I don't think they have access to that, and you are right, there's a big difference between getting search results with actual people links, and getting your ad anonymously delivered to people matching a given criteria.

By the way, you can click through the "create an ad" process quite far on facebook before you have to actually pay for it, so for those curious, why not give it a go and see for yourself what the process looks like? :)

Marketers have certainly been able to do "people who added our app who are x and like x" queries for a while.

The only difference is that ordinary people can do it with their friends and no obscure query syntax.

That's not the only difference. There's a big difference between "Hey facebook, show my ad to singles who like dogs" and "Hey facebook, show my the profiles of people who are singles and like dogs".

Right, I just don't get why Facebook had a huge rollout for a feature that provides very little, if any value to users, and tons of value to advertisers. It really says a lot about where they are as a company IMO.

Maybe because they don't really have any exciting, innovative products on the horizon for consumers, and that's the best they could do right now.

Which would, as I said, say a lot about where they are as a company. Originally features were developed for the users. Now that they have enough users, features are developed for the advertisers. I wonder if people will start moving away from FB soon.

That's how Facebook Ads worked/works.