According to SearchEnglineLand and a few other sources (hey, I read ’em all, folks), Facebook is opening up to Google and other search engine crawlers. Most people won’t care, some will rejoice, and a few will recoil.
One of the attractive things about Facebook is it’s “walled garden” approach; that means you have to be a member of Facebook in order to read things within it, and users have the right and ability to exclude people from their information. More precisely, users can limit the exposure of their information to only those people they approve of.
This announcement marks a change from a “walled garden” to a “walled garden with a big-ass open and unguarded gate” model. Facebook says that people can choose to not have their profiles indexed, but it is an “opt out” setup, not “opt in.” That means you have to go in there and find the switch that closes the gate on your profile. By default it’s wide open.
They’ve already opened the gate a crack, allowing exposure to a limited number of profiles. But according to the Facebook Blog, they plan to open the flood gates, in phases, over the next few weeks.
In response, some people speculate there will be an uprising, as users rebel against this change in policy and the fundamental nature of Facebook. I predict there will be no such rebellion.
Facebook is fun and addictive; a bit like smoking. Even if Facebook declared “every time you post something in Facebook your life is shortened by one day” people wouldn’t stop. If they said “by posting in Facebook you authorize government thugs to break into your home and plant video cameras and microphones, and to distribute the resulting media files to whomever wants them” people would just shrug and keep using Facebook. If a page appeared that said “By continuing to use Facebook you implicitly confess to all manner of crimes and accusations that will be leveled against you by the judicial thugs of our choice and you will be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of your life where you will be fed nothing but water and sour gruel. But we’ll let you keep using Facebook,” people would just click “OK” and think “whatever,” and continue using Facebook.
However, if they said “you have to pay $5 a month to keep using Facebook,” people would abandon it in droves and would probably go back to reading blogs.
5 thoughts on “Facebook will soon be Google-searchable”
hehehe, yeah, i do both, but i also unchecked the little box when they told me to do so…
vanou
Oh I unchecked that box pronto, as soon as I heard. Stupid Facebook. (Looks around nervously for agents in black dispatched to “neutralize” me for slandering the precious Book of Face).
zura
I’m still don’t find Facebook as interesting as what is left of the blogworld. It seems to lack substance and interaction. But maybe I’m an old fart. Though I do like that “My Question” feature and I had fun with the “World Challenge” game. But I wouldn’t be sad if it disappeared.
On the otherhand, I willing to part with two bucks a month in order to look at pretty pictures on Flickr. I’m not sure what that says about me.
Frank
I got to FaceBook 15 years late the same way I got to blogging 15 years late. I don’t understand what the allure is, frankly. Sure you can play megalomaniac and stay up until 0300h looking for friends in your friends’ friends. Not that I did that hehe. And then you can send mail, and there’s some plug-ins, and you can show pictures.
But there’s no blogging interface, it’s not clear what it wants to be [a portal? your homepage?], and even without the modifications you describe (openly-searchable). it already feels like someone is following you around, cataloguing to the right every action you and your friends make. It’s kind of weird!
Did you say that “Make my page openly searchable” button was already implemnted, or coming down the pipe? Do you know where it is/going to be in the interface? Openly-searchable = DO NOT WANT. :-)
stony_curtis
I actively boycott Facebook. Everyone I ever wanted to stay friends with, I’ve kept in touch through other channels. It is, however, very fun to listen to all the Facebook conversations at dinner parties/house parties.
I would rather spend my time doing something else.
Anything else.
Something like this. ;)
Irving Isler
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