Facebook data going public. See you on Google.

September 5, 2007 at 5:52 am · Filed under Online Marketing, Social Networking

A month or so ago at a presentation someone asked what the relevance of social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook actually carried. LinkedIn serves up public versions of profiles (here’s mine), which, of course, is indexed by Google and other search engines. So without dumbing down to a level to low, there is relevance in the greater search marketing picture. In this case, largely around the individual and their professional history. What about Facebook?With the creation of a new Internet Gold Rush with its recent shift to an open, monetizable platform, opening its content to indexing by search engines was a natural next step. In the wee hours of the night, Facebook announced that start of that move, with the introduction of Public Search Listings on Facebook on The Facebook Blog. Public Search Listings are currently, liked LinkedIn, focused on the user specifically. And, the information Facebook is providing is even more limited than what LinkedIn is providing, targeting the user’s online status (with additional links allowing you to interact with that person).The post by Philip Fung on The Facebook Blog shows an example of a public search listing, and, it is not a standard search result. The visual from Philip’s post:

I haven’t seen any in the wild, and likely no one has yet-that’s because they haven’t hit the search engines yet:

In a few weeks, we will allow these Public Search listings (depending on users’ individual privacy settings) to be found by search engines like Google, MSN Live, Yahoo, etc. We think this will help more people connect and find value from Facebook without exposing any actual profile information or data.

As noted in the quote above, privacy settings are available to the Google-shy. Insofar as greater search engine exposure, easy money says this is just the beginning.

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