Tag : facebook

Google has announced that it has added a new content source to its real-time search feature: Facebook Pages.

Google launched real-time search in December, providing a real-time feed of information from Yahoo Answers, Twitter, blogs, news websites, and other sources for hot or trending search results.

Two integrations have lagged though: MySpace andFacebook. Eight days ago, Google added MySpace updates to its stream. And now Google has added Facebook Pages to the mix.

Still, Google’s stream doesn’t include public Facebook profiles, something only rival search engine Bingcan access. This limits the usefulness of today’s update, but we still welcome the addition.

What This Means for Business

More ways to get found when you use our service.

More visibility for your campaign , a plus for your Facebook profile.

More and more celebrity holdouts are joining the Twitter bandwagon. First Bill Gates started tweeting, then yesterday rapper Lil Wayne joined the service. Today, another famous figure has his own Twitter presence: The Dalai Lama.

There has been an @DalaiLama account for some time. In fact, a fake Dalai Lama fooled the media and the twitterverse early last year, which was part of what spurred the creation ofverified Twitter accounts.

This Dalai Lama is verified by Twitter, though — it is the real deal. Currently, the account is pulling albums and blog posts from his website and tweeting them via twitterfeed, though we bet you’ll see real engagement later on. He also only has about 600 followers, but as the media picks up on his new-found Twitter presence, that will grow as well.

Twitter is simply one of the best ways for well-known personalities to spread their message to thousands or millions of people, but it looks like a conversation between Ev and the Dalai Lama was enough of a push to get him to finally join.

We look forward to future tweets from His Holiness.

GMAIL USERS: You’re welcome to join the discussion over on Mashable’s Google Buzz account.

Google Buzz is not a rival to Facebook or Twitter, says Google exec Bradley Horowitz — instead he sees it as a platform for conversation, and hopes other services will be able to flow in and out of Buzz.

In an eWeek interview earlier this week, Horowitz, Google’s VP of product management, was asked whether Buzz was intended as a challenger to Twitter and Facebook. He replied:

“Absolutely not. Per what I just said, this is creating a new category of communication. It’s filling a niche, which is not currently met in the market. I think something unique is happening on Buzz that will continue to evolve. It’s hard to create a trend line or extrapolate too much from six days of use, but certainly conversation and the conversational Web is a place where Buzz has excelled. I think it is unique and offers a compelling interesting experience.”

Conversation Is Key

Horowitz also explained that Buzz goes beyond updating your status (like Twitter) or checking in (likeFoursquare) — it’s about engagement:

“It’s not just status-casting. It’s not just checking in. It’s really meaningful interactions around meaningful topics within Buzz and it’s reaching the right audience and people are engaged. That kind of value proposition is I think unique to Buzz. I’ve heard that again and again. In the realm of positive feedback, I think that people are finding that the conversational mode of buzz is very, very powerful and the quality of audience is also great.”

Buzz: An Open System

Google’s plan, it seems, is to create an open platform for social messaging, such that Google Buzz is integrated with services all around the web. Horowitz aims to create the “most open, well integrated, well behaving social network in the industry.”

This technical openness could create the kind of developer stampede that made Google Maps, Twitter and Flickr take off. The only unknown is whether technical openness could be in opposition to the private nature of our e-mail inboxes.

How do you use Twitter, Facebook and Buzz? Let us know in the comments.

Facebook appears to have made a third acquisition — this one smaller than its two previous buys. What’s more, Facebook has shut down the company’s service immediately.

Octazen is a Malaysian company comprising two employees. It provides scripts to import a user’s contacts into a website upon sign up, reports Gigaom.

Why would Facebook acquire the makers of an address book importer? It appears to be a talent buy, with Facebook employing the team and shutting down their service (aka acq-hire-sition). Liz Gannes quotes Facebook’s Larry Yu explaining:

This is part of our ongoing effort to add experienced, accomplished technical talent to help drive the company forward in its efforts to be the central way for people to connect and share information.

A statement on the Octazen site reads:

The Octazen team wanted to let you, our valued customers, know that the company recently received an offer to acquire most of the company’s assets and to employ those assets in a different direction. After carefully evaluating this offer, our team believes this is a wonderful opportunity of which we must take advantage.

As a result, effective immediately, Octazen will no longer accept new service contracts or renew existing service contracts, and will enter a transition period to wind down operations.

Facebook’s previous two acquisitions — Parakey (a web operating system) and FriendFeed (social aggregation and search) — both added excellent engineers to the Facebook team at the cost of the original services. While FriendFeed still exists, it’s barely used and the site’s features have largely been merged into Facebook, to the disappointment of loyal FriendFeed users.