Facebook has started to test new versions of its Search that will take a deeper into content than just profiles. The experiment is being done with just a fraction of the people on Facebook, so it is likely that you will not see the new layouts for search results and its features this soon.
Potential features:
- The new potential features of Facebook search should be able to find content from:
- People
- Organizations
- Public figures of relevance as soon as they share it on Facebook
- You will be able to search your
- News Feed for the most recent status updates
- Photos
- Links
- Videos
- Notes being shared by friends
- Facebook Pages of which you’re a fan
- You will have complete control over the content you share from privacy settings.
In a blog post, Facebook engineer Kari Lee gives an example of what one might end up getting from a search on the news out of the Iranian election:
“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.”
A more advanced search is for sure a welcome addition to Facebook. Even though Facebook goes slow on releasing this feature, I suppose people will be willing to wait to watch to see what might actually evolve out of the test.