Social Media Butterfly

Facebook Planning to Add Inbox Search

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Facebook is planning to roll out inbox search this month. Users will be able to query their friends’ names or keywords. The search system was built in-house and has already been tested by some users.

Writing on the Facebook blog, engineer Prashant Malik said the search will be rolled out to select networks this week, but everyone will soon have access to the new feature. Malik also said inbox search has been requested for a long time, but they wanted to make sure they had a solid product that could scale, something that Twitter has been struggling with lately. I’m thinking that having a bunch of ex-Googlers on staff helped the effort finally get completed. 

Still, many users would probably prefer that Facebook’s security issues are fixed before new features and updated designs are rolled out.

Google’s New Friend Connect: Social Sites for Everyone!

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Google has launched an application to help website owners make their sites go social. I’ve already written it up over at Search Engine Watch:

Google’s Friend Connect: Add Social Networking to Your Site

Marty Weintraub from aimClear also added to the conversation over at Search Engine Watch:

Google “Friend Connect” to Make Advanced Social Features Easily Available

Google’s Slow and Subtle Foray into Social

Posted by Nathania Johnson

Google Reader, an RSS newsreader, is going social but in a very subtle and simple way.

Here’s the deal. You’ve been able to share items in Google Reader for a while, as well as email them to friends, etc. Now you can use a toolbar button to “note” things in reader, and they’ll be grouped with your other shared items.

My first reaction was, “Big deal, it’s not like this is Facebook or Twitter.” But then I remembered my thoughts from earlier in the week where I’m looking for social media that has more of a purpose and is less of a fad.

In fact, the lack of hype about Google’s foray into anything remotely social is refreshing, especially with the popularity of Google’s brand.

Hype has a tendency to peak. Friendster’s buzz faded in MySpace’s shadow and now Facebook is the hot network andTwitter is all the buzz, too.

Compared to that, Google’s social growth seems turtle-like. But Google’s pace may help it avoid some of the hype and tech pitfalls that plague the uber-popular sites of today.

Additionally, Google’s social products will likely be built in to the things you do every day - chat, email, read RSS feeds, for example. In a sense, if social is part of the grand plan at Mountain View, Google is almost building backwards from current web 2.0 sites, many of which are sprinting in a marathon.

FYI, if you want to read my shared items, click here.