Facebook's continued interest in being a part of the political dynamics in Iran has lead to them pushing up the launch of their Persian language translation of the entire Facebook site to tonight. They also would, undoubtedly, like to catch some of the media attention that has been going to twitter as a top enabler of political communication and organizing in otherwise censored Iran.
The site will be machine translated, but user corrections can be submitted.
Undoubtedly, Facebook needed feed search and public profile/page search just for functionality sake. And, undoubtedly, it was feeling pressure from Twitter addicts/researchers/marketers/reporters to have information remain relevant beyond the couple hour (or less) window of a person's feed (especially with feeds only covering a small portion of the info available to a Facebook user). But, I have to wonder if the events currently unfolding in Iran also had anything at all to do with the timing of the beta roll out too..? Even if just a little.
Consider...
1) Facebook was widely used as part of Mir Hossein Mousavi's political campaigning in Iran. The same has become increasingly true with Twitter.
2) Facebook has been sporadically blocked by Iranian officials throughout the past 18 months and during the protests has been almost completely blocked by the government.
3) Profile, page and public feed searches on Facebook would provide continuity of information over time for those Iranians who cannot access it for hours or days. Without search, much of the citizen journalism from Iran becomes, essentially, "lost" just due to it ending up obfuscated by newer posts. The same thing happens with information going into Iran and information coming from Iran's campaigns and organizers.
4) A government ban on posts that might cause "unrest" can be complied with on it's face (posts can be removed, etc.), but they might (depending on functionality) still be available via search. This would provide a lot of political/legal cover to the Iranian poster.
5) The Facebook engineer who announced the search beta, Kari Lee, concluded her blog announcement post with the following statement:
I'm interested in the latest updates on the aftermath of the Iranian election. By entering the term "Iran" in the "Search" field in the upper-right corner of any page on Facebook, I will see up-to-the-minute results from my friends and the Facebook Pages of which I'm a fan, not to mention people who have chosen to make their profile and content available to everyone. I'm able to discover what blogs and news sources my friends are following, what my friends are saying about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, and how people in general are reacting to the election results.
While the beta won't be able to address the issues of the currently unfolding situation in Iran due to it's small scale, the widespread roll-out of search very well might help Facebook remain relevant for the next "situation". And it would not surprise me if that was on the mind of at least a few folks over at Facebook.
Facebook is starting beta testing of new search functionality that covers pretty much everything posted by your friends and pages you are a fan of (basically anything that could appear in your feed).
It also covers everything published by anyone who has a public profile or page. This is huge. This is not only functionality that will be very helpful for the individual casual Facebook user, it will be of immense help to folks who are using Facebook as a research and promotions tool for their cause or business (or meeting their story deadline). They will finally get something more akin to Twitter search but covering the diverse content of FB (Photos, notes, posts, and comments galore!)
Admittedly, search will still be limited by privacy settings, but that is neccasary and does not much dilute this huge step forward.
ONe side effect I can see is pushing folks to establish both a public (marketing) profile and a private (personal) profile so they can have publicly searchable content for the whole community to see. I'm on the fence about this but leaning against (and which Facebook strongly discourages...mostly by deleting accounts). I'd say, stick with a page for that sort of thing...
(As per usual, they announced it with a random blog post by an engineer at 9:30pm the day before.)
This can't be fully rolled out quickly enough, in my opinion!
I'm hoping they open up public search outside FB (and not just to Microsoft as per one of thier last search partnership deals). This would make the business and research side of this functionality even more desireable.
(My friend and colleague David Erickson at the e-Strategy blog, has been pining for this for years...so if anyone can get him in the beta...right after they get me in...there will be a bag Twizzelers in it for you...the big bag too...with the ziplock!)
I had the great pleasure of seeing the stage production of Beverly Cleary's 'Ramona Quimby' at the Children's Theater Company (CTC) in Minneapolis Minnesota. I've probably seen 10-12 plays there and every time I am blown away by the quality of the acting...especially how good the kids are. All the kids (and adults!) in this production were great, but I thought 5th grader Scarlett Thompson was exceptional as Ramona. She projected excitement well and she projected her voice even better. Maeve Coleen Moynihan as Ramona's big sister Beezus and Katie Law-Gotich as Susan also do particularly great job too. I really enjoyed the acting, the play, and the fantastic set design. My Kindergarten daughter, 3rd grade son and his friend also really liked it a lot (and my daughter is notorious for disliking theaters of any kind, staged or movie). We have been to many of the productions with friends and family from out of town, some of whom are professional actors and they are all amazed at the quality of the CTC facilities, production values and actors. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful venue in the Twin Cities with such great professionals and wonderful talent!
If you have kids, get some tickets and go (by the end of the week though...it only runs until June 7th!)
