Facebook Begins New Search Rollout

Facebook said this afternoon that it’s “beginning the roll out of Facebook Search to all users,” which was previously being selectively tested. I’m unable to see it yet. But the Facebook blog explains:

You now will be able to search the last 30 days of your News Feed for status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you’re a fan. If people have chosen to make their content available to everyone, you also will be able to search for their status updates, links and notes, regardless of whether or not you are friends. Search results will continue to include people’s profiles as well as relevant Facebook Pages, groups and applications.

Search at Facebook has been pretty lousy and so this represents a big opportunity for the site to become more useful and engaging — more than it already is, that is. There doesn’t appear to be any larger integration of internal and external Web search (Microsoft). The latter is still an unrealized opportunity for both Facebook and Microsoft.

For those who don’t have the new search yet, see our What Is Real Time Search? Definitions & Players article, which explains it more. That article also looks at FriendFeed, which Facebook announced it was buying today.