Yesterday Facebook rolled out a new search platform for a select test-group which allows for real-time searching of recent news, profile and status updates. Although this undoubtably has been in the works for quite some time now,the recent events involving the Iranian elections and the DOJ asking Twitter to delay a scheduled down-time probably helped push this release out the door.
With the new search feed Facebook also plans on releasing what TechCrunch has dubbed, ‘The Everyone Button.’ Bypassing Facebook’s 25+ different privacy settings, this button would allow anyone the ability to release a message or update that would automatically be shared in the main public stream.
Everyone seems to be chattering away about whether or not it will have an effect on Twitter’s current role in being a hotspot for sharing late-breaking news but personally I doubt it. The two platforms offer drastically different use-patterns not to mention are composed of very different core-users. While Twitter might be the top choice for sharing newsworthy updates with the public, Facebook is quickly becoming the answer to everyday instant messaging with their Facebook Connect service. Within the last month Facebook Connect has been added to a wide range of sites from YouTube, Xbox Live, Nintendo DSi and most recently the Washington Post. It’s even been reported that Zynga has been pushing Apple to build the service into the next iPhone update. They’ve already had a million simultaneous users on the platform and that number is still rapidly rising.
As far as I’m concerned, trying to pit Facebook up against Twitter is like comparing apples and oranges, they just aren’t in the same categories. The real winner will be whoever finds a way to aggregate the best of both platforms into one cohesive service/application. If I had to guess I’d say that this will probably have to do with the usage of XMPP to connect not only the features found in applications but also the push/pull messaging systems that we undoubtably can’t live without.
