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Huh, that was fast. Barely one week has passed since Skype announced plans to acquire rival Qik, and now the buyout is complete. Skype celebrated with a blog post announcing the deal and reaffirms that its teams will be “working together… to make our mobile video products even better.” Not to worry, Qik faithful, we [...]

Huh, that was fast. Barely one week has passed since Skype announced plans to acquire rival Qik, and now the buyout is complete. Skype celebrated with a blog post announcing the deal and reaffirms that its teams will be “working together… to make our mobile video products even better.” Not to worry, Qik faithful, we [...]

Facebook’s been evolving right before our very eyes. It started back in March, when Facebook rolled out a new homepage design and redesigned Facebook Pages. At the same time, they started announcing changes to open up the platform: public profiles, profile fans, public status updates, real-time search, and earlier this morning, Facebook Lite. Facebook’s been busy.

All of this is part of a process we sometimes describe as Twitterification. Facebook is opening up in parts in order to combat Twitter – another reason why Facebook completed that blockbuster acquisition of FriendFeed. But since these privacy and profile changes have occurred in parts, they have created a lot of confusion.

That’s why we have written this guide to Facebook’s most recent changes to profiles, status updates, and privacy features. We highlight the big changes and explain what is likely to come next. Here’s how the new Facebook is set up:

Profiles

In terms of privacy, there have been two major changes. The first one, which occurred back in March, is that you can make your Facebook profile public. You can make all elements or just parts of your profile public: photos, details, videos, work information, etc. This can be managed in Facebook’s profile privacy settings.

The other major change to profiles, announced in June, is the ability to have profile fans. It’s just like Twitter followers: they will be able to see your updates and info without you friending them. This feature is not yet launched, but will be coming soon:

Status Updates

Status updates have also changed. In the past, only your friends could see your publish posts and status updates (you know, that big “What’s on your mind?” box at the top of the homepage). But as of June, you have the ability to post status updates not only to your friends, but to friends of friends, to your networks, and to everyone. You may need to activate it in your Facebook profile privacy settings.

You’ll also notice that there’s a custom setting. You can post status updates just to specific friend lists. For example, post a personal update just to your top 20 friends, or you can let everyone on Facebook find your update about your big tweetup next week.

The change brings it more in line with Twitter, which is public by default. Really though, this was the prelude to yesterday’s big Facebook Search launch.

Realtime Search

As we covered in-depth yesterday, Facebook is currently rolling out realtime search. While the old search only could find things like apps, groups, and people, the new search is like a beefed-up version of Twitter Search. The new search crawls the last 30 days of news feed activity – photos, notes, images, videos, links, and status updates – and lets users search them all by keyword. Want to learn more about the FriendFeed acquisition or chatter about Mashable on Facebook? The new search helps:

So where does Facebook privacy play into all of this? The search covers all of your friends, but on top of that, it searches all public profiles and public status updates. So if you want to be found in search, you better change your Facebook privacy settings. Remember though, what you say will be visible to everyone then, so don’t say anything you wouldn’t discuss on your public Twitter feed.

What’s Next?

Facebook’s many new features can all be described with one word: openness. It has seen Twitter steal the spotlight and the attention, especially when breaking news and world events occur. Facebook, with its hundreds of millions of users, should be able to do the same thing, but cannot due to the network restrictions that have existed since Facebook’s inception as a college social network.

Facebook will encourage all of its users to join in on the world conversation by opening up their profiles, making their status updates public, and promoting its new realtime search tool. It will also promote users having conversations around news items – a la FriendFeed. The acquisition provides Facebook with a lot of technology that focuses on realtime updates, public conversations, and in-depth discussions. You will see integration with the world’s largest social network very quickly. FriendFeed may even become the model for public discussions on Facebook.

Luckily, you have a choice in these matters. If you want to keep your Facebook profile private between you and your closest friends, you can – just adjust your privacy settings to your network of friends. However, as Facebook opens up more and more, the pressure to open up your profile will increase as well. So prepare yourself for a new Facebook, one that intends to take down Twitter and even give Google a run for its money.

Tags: facebook, twitter

With the ink on the deal still fresh, many are wondering what exactly will come out of the Facebook-FriendFeed acquisition deal. And many who’ve never used FriendFeed before may be wondering what the big deal is: why bother with Yet Another Social Network?

If you’re new to FriendFeed or have perhaps tried it and wandered away, your curiosity might be piqued now. If so, we have a quick power tip for you to help take advantage of its unique features right away.

If you’ve ever used the saved searches feature on Twitter you’re going to immediately understand the power of the equivalent feature on FriendFeed. The great thing about FriendFeed’s saved searches feature, however, is that it’s a lot more customizable.

The saved searches interface makes use of the advanced search features built into FriendFeed to give you fine-grained controls in the following areas:

Search only within specific groups – Once you’ve organized your FriendFeed contacts into groups (work, family, local, etc.), you can save searches only within that particular group. For example if you only wanted to know when your old college buddies are talking about your upcoming reunion, limit a keyword search for “reunion” within that friend group. You can even create an ad hoc list of people to include in the search without having to create a full group as well.

Search only within the title or within comments – You can limit search results to keywords found only within the title of an entry or even only within comments on entries.

Search only entries commented on or liked by specific people – This option can help float very important people in your list to the top of your attention when they interact with your activity stream around specific issues.

Search only within entries with a minimum threshold of comments or likes – This option helps surface only items with a certain level of attention or activity.

Advanced Search Operators

In addition to the fine-grained level of control in saved searches, FriendFeed also provides a handful of advanced search operators you can make use of from the regular search bar as well as within saved searches (although some functions overlap).

from: – Returns only search results from a particular user. Use a comma to search multiple users (Example: from:jeff,karen would return results from both jeff and karen).

group: – Returns only search results from a particular group. Use a comma to search multiple groups (Example: from:FriendFeed Hacks, Enterprise 2.0 would return results from both those groups).

friends: – This taps into FriendFeed’s powerful “friend of a friend” function to return search results only from a user’s friends (Example: friends:karen would return results only from karen’s friends).

service: – Limits search results only to those items brought in from a specific service. For example, if you wanted to get a zeitgeist of what people on Facebook have been saying about the acquisition, you might search All FriendFeed users with the query “friendfeed acquisition service:facebook.”

intitle: – Returns results with the specified term appearing in the title of the entry (Example: intitle:Veronica Mars).

incomment: – Returns results with the specified term appearing in a comment (Example: incomment:lame).

comment: – Returns results with comments from a particular user or user. Use a comma to search multiple users (Example: comment:jeff,karen would return items commented on by either jeff or karen).

comments: – Returns results with at minimum this many comments (Example: comments:20 would search only within items that had at least 20 comments).

like: – Returns results liked by a particular user or user. Use a comma to search multiple users (Example: like:jeff,karen would return items liked by either jeff or karen).

likes: – Returns results with at minimum this many likes (Example: likes:20 would search only within items that had been liked by at least 20 people).

- – This syntax excludes a word, user or term from your search. For example to look for items that discuss FriendFeed without mentioning Facebook, you’d use the search query “friendfeed -facebook.”

, – As mentioned in some of the other operators above, the comma acts to add multiple users or terms to an advanced search flag. Search geeks call this an “OR” search because it finds all results that mention Term A OR Term B.

There you have it — if you’re just diving into FriendFeed for the first time or if you haven’t been sure what all the fuss is about, give the Saved Searches feature a try and go the extra mile with the advanced search operators.

What other FriendFeed features would you like to know about? And more broadly, what other tips or tricks would you like to see us cover here? Let us know in the comments!

Tags: friendfeed, friendfeed tips, Search, tips, tricks