Facebook tests major changes to search

Shoehorns Iran into blog post about real-time, expanded functionality trials

17 June 2009 11:29 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Facebook has announced, via a blog post, that it is trialling some major changes to the site's search functionality.

A "fraction of a percent" of people on Facebook will see their search capability greatly expanded with a new layout and will be able to find content from the people and organisations they follow as soon as they share it on Facebook.

Testers will be able to search their News Feed for the most recent status updates, photos, links, videos and notes - a big change towards going more real-time, and content focused, from the current search that only brings back results of people, groups or pages.

Revealed while headlines are still fresh about rival site Twitter's maintenance reschedule, due to its importance to Iran as a communications tool, Facebook manages to make the post relevant to the Iran situation, something raising eyebrows among cynics.

"I'm interested in the latest updates on the aftermath of the Iranian election", Kari Lee, Facebook engineer and author of the blog post unveiling the new search functionality writes.

"By entering the term 'Iran' in the 'Search' field in the upper-right corner of any page on Facebook, I will see up-to-the-minute results from my friends and the Facebook Pages of which I'm a fan, not to mention people who have chosen to make their profile and content available to everyone. I'm able to discover what blogs and news sources my friends are following, what my friends are saying about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, and how people in general are reacting to the election results".

Facebook says, results dependent, it may expand the test to more people in the coming weeks.

Via: blog.facebook.com

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