Facebook announced on their blog today that they are testing a new version of Facebook Search. By the looks of it this is an attempted rival to Twitter’s real time social search engine Twitter Search. The new search feature is only being rolled out to a very limited number of testers for now, but from the looks of it, it is a long overdue feature for Facebook.
Twitter Search has become the definitive real time social search engine since it was launched by Twitter and despite attempts by Google to create a more real time search function, it is still the best way to find out who is talking about what right now.
Facebook search, as Ben Parr at Mashable notes, is not the most impressive of tools and is long overdue an overhaul. The new search function lets you search what is being said about a certain keyword in the news feeds of your friends, pages that you’re a fan of and any news feed that has been made public by the owner.
Although Facebook search will be resticted to people you’re friends with and public facebook profiles, it looks like it could begin to rival Twitter Search as the top real time search tool.
Facebook search could also be an invaluable search tool for brands wanting to monitor what is being said about them amongst their fans. Although, there will be no way for them to see conversation amongst people that are not fans; the people who are most likely to be saying negative things.
Facebook will be expanding the search feature to more people over the coming weeks.
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