Yesterday we first wrote about the upcoming Bing integration with Facebook, however at the time we were expecting the launch of the service to be imminent. Instead, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, told the Telegraph that “We should have our public updates integrated into a Bing beta within a couple of months. Unlike Twitter’s data stream, which is already totally public, we have to be very careful about making sure the correct data is streamed.”
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Yesterday Facebook search went live for a large percentage of Facebook users and pundits immediately began arguing over this being an attack on Google and an attack on Twitter, but what does this really mean? I’ve had a chance to Facebook’s new search for the past few months and have put the system to the test. Below are five immediate thoughts about what Facebook’s new search means for the future of the real-time web.
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Facebook has been beta testing its new search since June 16th and more recently the company began displaying search engine result pages (SERPs) that have a greater emphasis on Bing results. While many of you are looking for a little more bling to add to your attire, Facebook thinks that for the time being you’ll be satisfied with a little more Bing. The Bing results used to be displayed primarily in the “Sponsored Results” area but now they have their own section of the results page.
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Looking for hot singles in your area? Don’t plan on using Facebook’s advanced search tool to find them. Now you’re going to have to use the various dating applications on Facebook if you are the type of person who likes to use the computer to find new dating opportunities. While I wouldn’t describe Facebook as a dating platform, there’s no doubt that many users were using the site to connect with new people. MySpace was once a hotbed of activity for finding potential hookups. Facebook apparently doesn’t want to go that route.
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Over the past day there has been significant discussion about what the future holds for real-time search, and no matter what conversation you look at, Facebook is always part of it. Just last month, Facebook started testing a new version of search and over the past few weeks, I’ve taken the time to play with the system and compare it to other “real-time search engines”, primarily Twitter search.
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This evening Facebook has announced that they’ve begun testing out a new version of Facebook search. The latest version of search is a huge upgrade from the previous version. Now, rather than just seeing pages and people for a given search query, Facebook will search through content that’s posted by people, organizations, and public figures. According to Kari Lee, “With the test, you will be able to search your News Feed for the most recent status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you’re a fan.”
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Worio, the discovery-based search engine, is integrating with Facebook in order to leverage your Facebook activity to help you find information about the topics of interest to you. By looking at the information on your Facebook profile and the activity of your news feed, Worio can provide recommendations for information you may like. The interesting part of this recommendation system is that Worio is able to take advantage of your friends’ data coming through the news feed in order to generate more search discovery tools.
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This afternoon Mike Arrington posted about a new search engine called Topsy. The new service is built on the back of Twitter’s API and combines information like retweets, and general user influence to produce relatively accurate search results. It uses a similar algorithm to the one I suggested Facebook should use back in January. Since then, Facebook has made little progress in regards to search, at least that’s publicly known.
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Liz Gannes wrote an incredible piece today on the NewTeeVee blog discussing the “Changing Nature of Virality”. She hit the nail on the head in what is an evolving model of sharing on the web. For the past couple years, sites like Digg and Delicious have made it possible to drive a substantial amount of traffic to sites after articles reach the homepage.
The only problem with the existing model is that it can be gamed (take a look at this Los Angeles Times article for more). Contrast that with Facebook in which quality information naturally spreads throughout the social graph. Over the past month I’ve received at least 150,000 visitors from Facebook alone and none of that traffic was under my control. All I did was write an article that a large number of Facebook users were interested in.
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Did you know that Nick O’Neill was busted for marijuana possession? Granted, it wasn’t the same Nick O’Neill that runs this blog, and it took place in 1982, the year this site’s Nick O’Neill was born. But if you were looking for information on this particular Nick O’Neill, wouldn’t that be good information to know?
A new Facebook app called TrueScoop digs up the dirt on anyone you can think of. It’s a free service, so you can probably guess that you’re restricted to the information that’s available via public records across the U.S.
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