Facebook adds improved search feature, acquires FriendFeed

Posted on 11-08-2009

Users of the popular social-networking site Facebook will be glad to see the site rolling out an improved search feature from Monday.

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“With the new improvements, you will now be able to search the last 30 days of your News Feed for status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you're a fan. If people have chosen to make their content available to everyone, you also will be able to search for their status updates, links and notes, regardless of whether or not you are friends. Search results will continue to include people's profiles as well as relevant Facebook Pages, groups and applications,” wrote engineering manager Akhil Wable on the site’s official blog.

Rafe Needleman of CNET points out: “The Everyone filter is the key new feature. It lets Facebook users monitor the entire network for news and updates on big topics, the same way Twitter was consumed for information coming from Iran after the recent election.

“Like Twitter Search, the Facebook search result page alerts you when new results come in that match your query, but it doesn't update the whole page until you ask. This is arguably the best way to keep people up to date without overwhelming them.”

FACEBOOK ACQUIRES FRIENDFEED

In other news, Facebook has also acquired popular real-time online sharing service, FriendFeed, for an estimated $50 million. For the time being, both sites will run simultaneously, but it’s only a matter of time before Facebook incorporates all of its new acquisition’s important technologies and user base. It’s just like how everybody knew Google Video would shut down after YouTube was bought over.

FriendFeed has consistently scored points in its more Twitter-like approach to social networking, an aspect that is increasingly important for Facebook to maintain to remain competitive.

Sources: Facebook, CNET, TechCrunch