Facebook has officially made it impossible to hide from it.
Starting today, its search bar is now capable of retrieving every public post ever made — that’s 2 trillion of them. It’s a major step in making Facebook’s search tool relevant when finding breaking news and trending topics, two areas dominated by Google and Twitter.
Previously, searching on Facebook would return Pages a user liked or friended. Now it will return basically everything, but displayed in a more organized manner.
For example, searching “Benghazi Committee” pulls up results from people “Involved in This Story” (in this instance, a post from Sen. Harry Reid); “Top Posts” from publishers that I both follow and don’t; and posts from friends. Lastly, there’s a “Public Posts” section that retrieves the “most recent and relevant” messages.
Here’s what it looks like in action:
Facebook users make 1.5 billion searches each days, it says in a blog post, the aim is to make people aware of its capabilities. The social network has an image problem when it comes to search since people don’t turn to it first when it comes to breaking news, and it was difficult to sort through the myriad of results.
Perhaps this will change that perception.
Images via Facebook.
More in Media
‘JG believed that even in a demanding industry, it was possible to lead with both rigor and humanity’
The industry pays respects to OpenX CEO John Gentry, who sadly passed away last week.
The Rundown: Google has drawn its AI payment lines — and publishers’ leverage is narrow
For publishers trying to navigate AI licensing, the message was blunt: Google is willing to pay for access, but not for training – and it remains unwilling to define AI Overviews as a compensable use of journalism.
Media Briefing: Google’s latest core update a reminder that pageviews can’t remain the primary metric
Google’s latest core update signals pageviews can no longer be the primary metric, favoring intent-solving publishers over scale.