Ok, Facebook Updates Will Be Searchable but How Valuable Are They?

Now it is not surprising that the entire blogosphere is abuzz over Microsoft’s Bing deal with Twitter and Facebook about adding real-time search in public Twitter feeds and Facebook status updates. Of course real-time search is supposed to be a hit these days and everyone somehow tends to think this is exactly what is supposed to revolutionize the web - and it sure will revolutionize the web at least for those hard-core geeks that can’t live a minute without knowing what’s going on in the world (especially the tech world) at this very moment.

To me the deal definitely looks huge given that Microsoft has managed to get two very cool and hyped services while Google stays without all those precious real-time pieces of information that everyone should be crazy about. And of course Google must feel hurt about Bing doing something it can’t do. But now tell me does having such live updates in its search index make Bing more competitive versus Google? Is it really something that will make a good portion of the audience choose Bing over Google?

I really don’t want to spoil the celebration for everyone but I hope no one will doubt it very much if I share my concerns over the entire idea here. I don’t even want to mention the tiny things like tons of duplicate content on Twitter and Facebook - like those numerous retweets of interesting content combined with some users (like me) choosing to update their Facebook statuses right from Twitter - and further adding to the mess of duplicate content.

Of course there’s no denying to the fact that Twitter features plenty of useful information and can serve as an excellent tool for research whenever you need some fresh news - whatever the topic is. But is it equally true for Facebook as well? Are Facebook updates equally useful or will they only add to the noise? Unfortunately I have my doubts here.

I don’t know about you but even with the availability of various search engines and their accuracy it is still sometime difficult for me to find the content that will really truly serve my needs. As a result when I do some large-scale research for a consulting project or something, I normally use a complicated combination of search tools (frequently those that search within specific sites, including Facebook when I’m looking for groups or fan pages and Twitter when I’m looking for honest and fresh opinions from people).

I rarely face a situation where I actually can’t find something that I need - I will still find it but it is the matter of figuring out where to go to find it and how many pages of search results I should dive into. It already seems to me that the availability of information has probably reached the level where it is much more difficult to sort everything out and identify something that you want - and staying without search results at all is hardly something I can imagine.

So what will Bing now offer me? Sure, they want to add tons of updates from millions upon millions of Twitter and Facebook users - if Microsoft decides these updates are somehow relevant to my request. And you know what? To me this all sounds a little bit scary when I try to imagine that I’ll have something even more crowded when I need to find something quickly and without all those real-time updates.

And will Facebook updates really provide any value to the searchers? In fact, now that I look at my Facebook wall and see the updates from my friends, they definitely make tons of sense to me and actually look pretty useful. But there’s one factor that should be taken into account here: they are only useful to me because they come from my friends. And even if their updates are public, it does not mean that they are equally useful to other users. Of course it matters if a friend shares the news of buying a new house but will I need thousands of real estate agents from Facebook attacking me with their sales pitches if I am interested in one particular house purchased by one particular friend of mine?

Of course it is hard to judge until Facebook updates really go live on Bing and chances are it will be much better than my expectations currently are. But it will really be interesting to see how many people make their updates public on Facebook and what kind of updates these are - and if they add value to the overall news landscape same as Twitter updates do.