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.”
This upgrade is nothing short of momentous. What’s interesting is that Facebook is emphasizing “up-to-the-minute results” from friends and Facebook Pages. The search demoed in the Facebook blog post is about the news in Iran. So why would Facebook make such a massive announcement at 10:26 pm? The only rationale I can come up with is that they are trying to squash some of the love from the press about Twitter as it has become the center of conversation in regards to the Iranian uprising.
This new iteration of search is interesting in that it shows all of the results among your friends and then those posts from other people around the site, something that not even Twitter search currently provides. What’s also interesting is the combination of the various types of media being posted. For the past few months I have been discussing how important Facebook’s search engine is and until today there had been no updates on the service.
In January I described the “real social search engine” but there was little buzz about any imminent Facebook releases. Tonight Facebook has announced this latest version of search and I have to say that it appears to be extremely impressive. I’m only frustrated that I’m not able to view the latest version of search yet! If you’re able to view the latest version of search, please let us know as we would love to see a hands on version!
