DISQUS

David Kirby · 9 months ago

Where did you get the part that google will index it? Inside facebook reports that

"However, profiles opened to everyone will not be visible for search engines - viewers must be logged into Facebook in order to access the open profiles."

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/03/16/facebo...

Albert Willis · 9 months ago

Whoa, lets slow it down a little. I agree--Facebook is heading in the right direction and is finally starting to open up. That's good; however, shoehorning real-time updates into Facebook's user interface hasn't been great for its users. Many of my friends on Facebook don't like or understand the new interface. Sure, social media geeks think it's great, but the average Facebook user is pretty unhappy right now.

Track--realtime discovery of users and conversations using keywords--is a long way off for Facebook. Again, average Facebook users don't like seeing the information from people they're not friends with--as far as they're concerned, that's a bug, not a feature. It doesn't fit with the Facebook culture. Now, that can change, but it'll take some time.

Meanwhile, discovering new things on Twitter as always been part of Twitter's DNA. And of course, that's where track was invented.

I doubt Twitter will regret not selling out to Facebook--they see a much bigger opportunity. As long as they continue to be the default message bus and build on that, they'll continue growing. We already know that track--and probably a few other features--are running internally. I doubt realtime updates on Facebook surprised Biz or Ev; that's where everything is heading anyway. Because Twitter is lightweight compared to Facebook, they can move pretty fast.

Next up for Twitter is a smooth rollout of OAuth, which will further strengthen Twitter's ecosystem. These next few months should be interesting to watch; I wouldn't underestimate Twitter.

Louis Gray · 9 months ago

Post by Jesse Stay: http://www.friendfeed.com/jessestay

Jesse Stay · 9 months ago

This is *huge* news! I'm surprised everyone else isn't all over this.

Daniel J. Pritchett · 9 months ago

Nice catch, Jesse. Do you foresee 3rd party services that allow us to easily extend Facebook to replace/emulate things like Twitter and FriendFeed when applicable? I'm hoping for server-side stuff rather than client-side... don't really dig Tweetdeck as much as others do.

Jesse Stay · 9 months ago

TweetDeck is already doing this on the Client side, and PeopleBrowsr is doing it already on the server side. Search is where it will get very interesting though. Imagine being able to search all 180 million people on Facebook.

Thom Allen · 9 months ago

Yeah I would love to see more on the server side. Or at least a dev server that will allow us to move a lot of the work off the client.

Andy Connell · 9 months ago

Agree with Jesse. This is what everyone was calling for, surely..

sofarsoshawn · 9 months ago

Couldn't you always create a public search listing and badge with this information? That's been in place for a while now.

Richard Cunningham · 9 months ago

My understanding of the term "Walled Garden" was that it referred to sites which didn't let you extract much with the API, thus causing you to have to goto, in this case, to facebook.com for some tasks.

Facebook have improved access slightly by opening up links and notes (which are not widely used it seems). However, you still cannot access a lot of stuff using the API, for example you still can't:
- read your Inbox or send messages
- read/write Wall messages
- status update comments and likes
- list of your friend's friends
- submit a friend request
- use instant messaging (in an approved way)
and lots of other stuff.

Jesse Stay · 9 months ago

Richard, I guess it all depends on your definition of Walled Garden. I think some of those things are good that they're not opening up. There is huge potential for spam in many of those. My definition has always been the opposite of what Twitter is doing - they were keeping status updates and profiles completely private, and inaccessible from the general public. Now they're available, to the public, via an API, just like Twitter is. They almost offer every bit of functionality, both via their UI, and API, that Twitter does, and more now. As far as comparing to Twitter goes, Facebook's walled garden pretty much no longer exists.

Richard Cunningham · 9 months ago

Twitter has API methods for virtually everything and lots of Twitter applications I see rely on stuff don't have a equivalent in Facebook's API. Since Facebook launched applications that live inside Facebook, they haven't focused much on external apps, though this now seems to be changing.

I agree they are making the step to public data which they previously avoided, however, I wonder how many users of Facebook are interested in sharing data publicly. Many people I know (who are on Facebook) do not want to share anything with the whole world. (I realize of course this is turned off by default)

Hazman Aziz · 9 months ago

Cools .. great tips.

stevegillmor · 9 months ago

well said

Rob Diana · 9 months ago

The big problem is still search. Very few people can support indexing the entire public feed, but an integrated search would be killer.

SeekGround · 9 months ago

I just hope they do a better job of explaining this new openess to users. It is one thing to give status updates to your friends but something else entirely to give them to the world. Due to Facebook's former reputation the average user may not recognize that things have changed.

MyProfitExpert · 9 months ago

They did it again! Another big mistake made by Facebook!

They should NOT have indexed on Google. Instead, they should have created their own private search engine, like twitter did! Why? Because that's how they could monetize the website! Facebook keeps looking for ways to monetize its website, but keeps missing the opportunities one after another.

Looks like now I have to update Wednesday's blog post.... :-/

riaz · 9 months ago

Yea I second robdiana on search, but this intensifies the need for better privacy and groups - the conversations I have in Twitter would be of little interest to the majority of people in my FB account.. it would be great to add private group discussions as well..

Facebook User · 9 months ago

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'll keep my private.

chacha102 · 9 months ago

You cannot say that Facebook is open for everyone if the only way I can see else's content without friend requesting them is through a mutual friend request. The fact that Facebook still requires that you make a 2way friend relationship just prevents any type of networking that Twitter and Friendfeed users have become so acustom to. So even though everyone can see everything, big deal. I'm not going to use Facebook more just because of that, because I can't follow them.