Facebook debuts new and improved search engine features to a small fraction of its 200 million users, even as the comparisons to Twitter's real-time tweeting continues. Adding search will be an application development coup for Facebook, but users will still likely use Twitter for snackable content and Facebook for longer, more comfortable social networking. Meanwhile, the TweetDeck Twitter desktop client comes to the iPhone.
Facebook, chided by spoiled Twitter fans for its
inability to let users search content in real time, said June 16 it is testing the
latest version of Facebook Search for a fraction of a percent of the people on
Facebook.
The lucky batch of people will see new layouts for search
results on people's profiles, Facebook Pages, groups and applications. Facebook
engineer Kari Lee wrote in a blog post that:
"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. You will
also be able to search for status updates, posted links and notes in Search
from people who have chosen to make their profile and content available to
everyone. As always, you can control what content you're sharing by editing
your privacy settings here."
For example, Lee said that by entering the term
"Iran" in the "Search" field in the upper-right corner of
any page on Facebook, she will see up-to-the-minute results from her friends
and the Facebook Pages of which she's a fan. She will also see I'm what blogs
and news sources her friends are following and what they're saying.
What does this mean for the 200 million-plus Facebook
users in the world? It means that instead of just being able to find people to
connect with, you will get super current windows into more content, a holistic
experience that every social network aims to provide in an age where keeping
people inside the network is key. After all, that's where the ads Facebook
makes money off of, or tries to, live.
Bloggers are positioning the move as a move to catch up to Twitter, which in
2008 captured the hearts and minds of users the way Facebook did in 2007.
Twitter's own search functionality lets users enter keywords and latch on to
specific topics. But Twitter, for all its real-time capabilities, still has
much less capability than Facebook, which owns a wealth of data on people and
sports thousands of applications.
The Facebook versus Twitter debate is not so much about
which is better, but which is better for what users want to do. Users who
prefer a richer experience may prefer Facebook; those who live in the Web 2.0
moment will find Twitter more satisfying. As Between The Lines' Sam Diaz put it:
Facebook, on the other hand, can offer more than 140
characters and a link in its results. Being able to see results in a number of
ways - photos, videos, and so on - offers deeper insight into the topic being
searched... Just because Twitter had the jump start is no reason for Facebook
to back off and let it become the de facto source for what's being said in
real-time.
Indeed, people continue to be atwitter about Twitter,
which
grabbed many headlines for delaying downtime in the wake of Iranian election
protests.
Applications piggybacking on Twitter are also feeling the
love. TweetDeck, a Twitter desktop client that aims to be a personal browser for connecting
users with their contacts across Twitter, Facebook and other sites, launched
its iPhone app.
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