Facebook gets Twitter-like search

New users to Facebook (and probably some existing users, but not all of them yet) are getting a new search experience in Facebook starting Monday. The new interface for search makes it possible to see all public results from Facebook users (the Everyone filter), or just results from your friends. Or, as before, only Events, Groups, or Applications.

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.

You get updated with a little alert when a search result using the Everyone filter gets new results.

(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)

Facebook's 250 million-strong user base, and the demographic breadth of its audience, puts Twitter's geeky but growing audience to shame. However, Twitter and Facebook are not, strictly speaking, direct competitors. The standard social models for the sites are still quite different. In Twitter, by default, anyone can follow anyone else. In Facebook, however, people are accustomed to only reading updates from those people with whom they have established a two-way relationship. The new Everyone filter makes Facebook like Twitter in search, but it will take some time for people to learn to use Facebook the way they do Twitter, and it's not clear that the two models will mesh well on one social platform.

See Facebook's official blog post on the new features. Also Monday: Facebook buys FriendFeed: Is this a big deal? and FriendFeed features that Facebook needs to absorb.

[Mweaver2k9]

Facebook is NOT Twitter. When will Facebook figure that out? Why on earth would I need to do a search to see who on Facebook is talking about what, especially people I don't know? That is what Twitter is for. Facebook is really starting to just get annoying

[Mr.Whippy]

Hmmm. I wonder if this will dig up private profile messages. that 'everyone' button intrigues me.

[jasonjhill]

Very interesting news. This combined with the acquisition of Friendfeed certainly makes it look like Facebook is trying to become a one stop resource. It seems to me to be perfect timing with the groaning and creaking that Twitter is under with scalability issues.

Twitter's greatest strength is that it is an open faced public means of communication by nature. It connects like minded strangers vs Facebook being an outreach to those you already know (for the most part, I know there are exceptions to the model) I am willing to bet that we will start to see a public and a private set of tools for Facebook users. Power users can bounce outside their private profiles as they want, and traditional users stay with the familiar set of tools.

[PandaSage1221]

I use Facebook very rarely anymore. And I'm in college. I'm the "target" audience. I'm supposed to be among the ones checking Facebook 25 times a day. Now, I check it every 2 or 3 days.

I've determined the main reason for that is because Facebook is so much like Twitter now. It's filling a "void" that was already filled. It's largely redundant to me now.

(Another contributing reason being that Facebook doesn't really care about college students anymore.. it was supposed to be our thing.. it's kind of annoying/maddening to us that Facebook has so many adults and real world people on it now. And, yes, I know that's kind of elitist, but.. it did used to be just ours.)

[Harlan879]

Most people have their status updates set to "Friends only" or "Friends and Networks only". So this search won't be very useful, except maybe in large networks ("New York, NY"). However, I recall that they're beta testing a feature where individual status updates can be configured to go to everyone, or subsets of your friends, or whatever. That would be useful. Then I could use Facebook to act like Twitter -- post personal sorts of things to be friends-only, then post thoughts of global consequence (hah!) to Everyone, available for search. Of course, it'll be much easier if #hashtags become used and if you can set up permanent searches somehow, like in many Twitter clients. Sounds like they still have a ways to go before being UberTwitter.

[Hb_Kai]

Does seem somewhat, interesting.

But still, something Facebook's users have been asking for a lot lately is the idea of an "unlike" option... I see no unlike button.

[EvanSei]

when you find something that works..... copy it!

[CyR00k]

Unless Facebook is going to violate it's own privacy policy and start publicly sharing information that its users did not opt to display publicly this new search feature will be nearly useless. Users are already aware of the status updates posted by their friends and groups. A real time search of things that I can already scroll through is redundant and pointless.

[sadchild]

interesting little semi-subliminal stab at obama included in that screenshot there. a vanilla example would have sufficed. have a political agenda to promote, mr needleman?

[alibaba51]

love must be thereason for every thing nice in this live.

[alibaba51]

what ever you want . answer is yes