Facebook opens profiles up to search engines
This week, Facebook announced it will open up its profiles to search engine spiders. What does that mean? At a practical, detail level, it means a barebones Facebook profile (name, photo and not much else except contact capability) will show up on Google when you search the name of a person who happens to be registered at Facebook. But the big story is that, whereas Facebook has been something of a youth-oriented black box to the majority of age 35+ professionals, that mystery will last no longer. I predict that people over thirty who are not currently using Facebook are going to be shocked at the number of their friends and colleagues who are on the platform.
Are they doing business there? Not so much. Are they monitoring their kids or just checking out a phenomenon? Yeah.
Users have a month to dial up their Facebook privacy controls and remain invisible to the search engines. Those controls are very fine indeed, but probably too much work and too many clicks for the average user. The result will be massive search engine exposure for unsuspecting Facebookers.
(BTW, the above are US-centric comments. Facebook’s international expansion is not student driven. 5% of the Norwegian population is on the platform already.)
Jules Pieri 
One Response to “Facebook opens profiles up to search engines”
Interesting post Jules. I discovered that my Facebook profile was showing up in Google a few months ago; Perhaps this is the first official word the company decided to release. As a college student, I have watched this platform go from a space I and my college buddies used to stay in touch and socialize to a place my perspective employers and clients monitor and my professional network and colleagues connect.
I agree that many of my unsuspecting fellow classmates will be shocked to see that the party pics they thought they were passing around to friends could turn up at the top of a Google search.
However, instead of turning up privacy controls and trying to keep employers in the dark about what happens behind their seemingly closed profile doors, they should understand that this is now another powerful tool to network and improve their online presence.