In a blog post yesterday morning, an obscure Facebook blogger announces that the social network is testing out real-time search.
This is a big deal.
One of the major frustrations with Facebook to date has been the anemic search engine with its bare bones functionality.
This new feature will let you search your activity feed to find out what’s up with your Facebook friends on any topic you search, and:
“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.”
That’s the big part.
My Tunheim colleague Pat Lilja has a fascinating take on what the real-time search function might mean to Facebook as a venue for breaking news and political communication such as the activity we’re currently seeing in Iran.
Nick O’Neil at All Facebook also points out:
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.
Now we have the ability to monitor, at least to some degree, the chatter and conversations taking place in Facebook.
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