Facebook And Google Search, And Making The Internet More Public

Today there have been some very big events in the world of social media. Facebook acquired FreindFeed and also launched a new real-time search. Google also improved their search my making it faster and way more accurate.

When the news broke that Facebook bought FriendFeed, it was big. I thought that there would be some big changes to FriendFeed, like taking off Twitter support, or possibly even shutting down the service completely. A lot of FriendFeed users use Twitter too, so by making FreindFeed non-cooperative with Twitter would kill thousands of accounts, leaving Facebook the victor.

This did not happen yet, but if it does, there will probably be a lot of backlash from the Twitter community. However, people will get over it, and they'll just make a Facebook account and jump on that boat.

I don't know if anyone noticed, but Facebook also launched a new search. Not many Facebook users care that much, because a lot of the people I know who use Facebook only use it for photos and status updates. Maybe this will change, and people will use search more often, but I doubt it will attract more new users.

Google also got in on the action today and launched a developer version of their improved search engine, which is faster and more accurate. This makes it easier for people to find something on the go, because you don't have to flip through 10 pages of results. It will be interesting to see how Google will tie this in with Wave which is rounding the corner.

There is one common theme that I see in all of this. I think that the internet is becoming more public, and that information is being shared more easily. There is less fear of being known, and people try to broadcast themselves to anybody who wants to listen/watch/read/play/communicate.