On the same day in which Facebook acquired FriendFeed, the company has just rolled out its new real-time search engine for all users.

With the new Facebook Search, which is still accessed by entering search terms in the box on the top right of any page, users will now see the latest status updates and shared content from both friends and all users who have made their profile open to everyone – in addition to more static types of results like applications, pages, notes, and groups.

For example, here’s what real-time results for “Iran” now look like:

Facebook Search is now directly competitive with Twitter’s real-time search engine, which the company recently made more prominent for new users. However, the new Facebook search differs from Twitter in two important ways:

1. Updates from your friends, which are usually not public, come before updates from everyone.
2. All updates contain rich content in-line, from videos to music to thumbnails of shared links.

It’s important to note that updates from friends are usually private, and not on the public timeline. Although today Facebook is making public timeline search available for the first time ever, it is still prioritizing this new form of social search above searching the public timeline. Earlier this year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Inside Facebook that the future of Facebook lies in a hybrid public/private sharing model, but we’re still in the early days of seeing the ways that Facebook can leverage the social graph in providing more relevant search results for time-sensitive or research-related queries.

As Facebook engineering manager Akhil Wable writes,

By being able to search more types of content that are being shared on the site, you can easily find out your friends’ evening plans and recently frequented restaurants by searching for “dinner,” discover which of your friends are following Michael Schumacher’s comeback during the “Formula 1″ season by searching for the race series, or query “economy” to see if people or your favorite news sources feel that the recession is turning around. You also can search for a company or product to learn what people are saying about that brand.

However, the launch of public timeline search is still an important step forward in the evolution of Facebook’s search services. Now, marketers and analysts will have another tool to monitor conversations on Facebook in addition to Facebook’s Lexicon tool, which only shows trends at a very high level. Facebook started allowing users to open up their profiles to everyone in March, in an attempt to better serve users who want to share their updates more openly as opposed to using Facebook’s robust privacy controls.

Web results from Microsoft are also included (at the bottom of the page) as part of Facebook’s search partnership with Microsoft, who also owns a 1.6% stake in Facebook. However, Microsoft is not contributing search technology to the new Facebook Search.

APIs Critical to the Future of Real-Time Search

But as we wrote recently, APIs are critical to Facebook’s plans to dominate real-time search. Today, hundreds of third party applications and monitoring tools are built on top of the Twitter Search API to keep tabs on product mentions, hot trends, and consumer sentiment. Given that Facebook has at least an order of magnitude more active users than Twitter, Facebook should be able to return much larger and broader data sets to marketers and journalists. In addition, since Facebook has much deeper data on user identity, it should be able to provide even richer types of aggregate real time search data if it so desires.

The consumer search applications are also clear. Facebook has the potential to displace Google and other search engines for queries on content discovery, product recommendations, news, and more. While Google makes a living inferring authority from links, Facebook will be able to infer authority from shares and social proximity. This is data Google largely doesn’t have access to (at least, full access to). If Facebook were to make it easier for users to do real time searches from a variety of applications and devices, it could become a more significant search player in the future, which in turn could drive substantial new revenue streams for the company.

Conclusion

Nevertheless, the full launch of real-time and public timeline search today mark an important step in Facebook’s evolution. Though it’s still very early in the evolution of Facebook’s search product, the company is increasingly committed to investing in search infrastructure to bring the vision of social search closer to reality – which could increasingly threaten Google and Microsoft’s search dominance.

This morning, Facebook acquired FriendFeed, a real-time aggregation and sharing service, in the company’s second acquisition ever (the first was Parakey). The FriendFeed team will be moving to Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto soon.

What does the deal mean for developers, marketers, and the future of the Facebook Platform? We just spoke with Paul Buchheit, co-founder of FriendFeed, and Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s VP of Engineering.

“We can’t go into too much detail just because it’s so early, but a lot of what really drove this was our realization after talking to many people at Facebook that we have a shared vision for where sharing and collaborating should go,” Buchheit says.

“The [Facebook] platform is a large part of the draw for us. We put a lot of thought into the FriendFeed platform, making it simple and easy to build apps on top of. We are also a consumer of the Facebook Platform, and altogether we’ve learned a lot of lessons.”

Facebook’s Mike Schroepfer says developers should see the acquisition as part of the company’s overall increasing investment in the Facebook Platform.

“We really respect the team, the way they build the product, and the [FriendFeed] platform,” Schroepfer says. “We are trying to increase our investment overall in the Platform. There will be more features rolling out over the course of the year like the Open Stream API that should make the Platform more open and make more data available to developers. This could accelerate some of those efforts.”

FriendFeed’s product has remained clear and streamlined in the nearly two years since it was founded, enabling users to follow others’ activity streams in real time, comment on and “like” shared content, and search the stream – all features that Facebook either has integrated into its core service over the last year or is in the process of integrating, showing some important similarities in product vision between the two companies.

As Facebook continues to open up its service to more public sharing – especially as it relates to publishing-related developer tools like the Open Stream API and Facebook Connect – the FriendFeed team’s experience could prove very valuable. While Schroepfer and Buchheit wouldn’t say which groups the FriendFeed team would specifically be merged into, it’s possible that one of FriendFeed’s founders could take a leadership role on the Platform team, helping Facebook better navigate the tensions between privacy and openness for its 250 million users and thousands of application developers.

Facebook has acquired real-time feed aggregator FriendFeed, Facebook has just announced.

As part of the deal, all 12 employees of FriendFeed, which was founded by ex-Googlers Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Paul Buchheit, and Sanjeev Singh, will join Facebook immediately. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but we’re guessing it’s mostly or all stock. (FriendFeed had raised $5 million from its founders and Benchmark Capital.)

The acquisition is only the second in Facebook’s history. Two years ago, the company acquired “web OS” company Parakey in a hire-by-acquisition deal that brought Parakey co-founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt to the company.

In our view, FriendFeed is also largely a talent acquisition. Buchheit was one of the original creators of Gmail, and Taylor and Norris were part of the original Google Maps team, so the company brings a depth of experience building large scale consumer products to the table. However, FriendFeed has struggled to gain widespread consumer adoption, and US traffic to FriendFeed.com recently leveled out to around 1 million monthly uniques according to Compete.

Nevertheless, the two companies share similar long term product visions. FriendFeed has been steadily building a real-time aggregation service that makes it easy to share online activity with friends. The company’s product has remained clear and streamlined in the two years since it was founded, enabling users to follow others’ activity streams in real time, comment on and “like” shared content, and search the stream – all features that Facebook either has integrated into its core service over the last year or is in the process of integrating, showing some important similarities in product vision between the two companies. As Facebook continues to open up its service to more asymmetric following, the FriendFeed team’s experience could prove very valuable.

This is not the first time Facebook has considered acquiring a company in the space. Last year, Facebook was in heavy discussions to acquire Twitter, but those talks fell through. Now, it will be the FriendFeed shareholders that will be exchanging their stock certificates. Facebook has recently been creating new ways for users to share information more publicly that are more similar to the public nature of sharing on Twitter.

As for FriendFeed.com and the FriendFeed API, FriendFeed says both will continue to “operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.”

Here’s the full announcement from Facebook:

PALO ALTO, CALIF.—August 10, 2009—Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online.  As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founder. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO.  ”As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees.  FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

Military troops, veterans, and spouses can now reconnect with relocated friends through a new Facebook application called Military Basebook. The app allows users to set up profiles based on where they’ve been stationed and find former friends and colleagues who’ve also spent time on those bases.

Creator Josh Kayser has found the application to be especially popular among military husbands and wives who get shuffled from base to base often with their enlisted significant others. Kayser recently told military news site Stars and Stripes that he wanted to give those affected by the numerous moves a way to keep in touch.

“We’ve found that this is really popular for spouses,” said Kayser, who works for a company that helps veterans and retirees with their benefits. “We’re finding they are getting the most benefit, the ones most excited about the application.”

Basebook has gained several thousand users in the few weeks of its existence, but its future may be threatened by the recent questions surrounding access to social networking sites for military personnel. The Marines, who are often in the most remote bases and shuffled from post to post, have already issued a ban on sites like Facebook.

However, applications like Basebook fuel the argument that there are many positive aspects to social networking pertaining to the military, and it will be interesting to see how the Department of Defense responds as sites like militarybasebook.com gain popularity.

While Facebook’s growth in North America, Europe, and South America is well known, its growth down under has gone less noticed. In Australia, 6.5 million people, or 30% of the national population, are active on Facebook every month.

Now, New Zealand has crossed a major milestone: the number of active Facebook users in the country has crossed one million, or nearly 25% of the population. Facebook has grown over 150% in New Zealand over the last year, and the current monthly growth rate is over 31%, according to the Facebook Global Monitor.

New Zealand has openly embraced Facebook, and the social site is currently far more popular than any of its competitors in the country. Kiwis have even used Facebook for some unorthodox purposes — early this year authorities used the site to nab a criminal after he posted security camera videos of the thief on Facebook. Facebook has also been expanding its foothold in the region with this year’s opening of regional offices in Sydney, Australia.

Growth is likely to continue at this rate for at least a few more months. As more application developers create apps targeted toward users in the region, we should see even more engagement on the Platform as well.

Facebook users love a challenge, especially when it involves virtual booze. At least, that’s what the sudden success of the application Chug It! would suggest. The virtual drink guzzling competition has caught on quickly, and developer Offbeat Creations, Inc. has definitely hit a nerve with this one, with the app picking up more than 1.8 million users in the last couple of weeks.

Chug It! is a fairly simple game: send friends a notice that you have just “chugged” one of the selectable beverages, and he or she will have 48 hours to respond by matching your drink and sending you one in return. Eventually, some wins or loses, and as you compile wins, you can unlock other drinks to pass along to your fellow chuggers. I’m only 251 wins away from the Appletini. As you win these virtual drinking contests, you’ll also climb up the ranking scale to eventually become Vicious Chuggilicious.

Every time a challenge is extended, the info shows up in your Facebook News Feed, so your friends will be alerted to the throw downs. The fact that this is a time sensitive challenge may have a lot to do with its success, and its simplicity makes it easy for anyone to participate.

Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Social Games – tracking all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, August 3

• The Top 25 Facebook Games for August 2009
• Are Chinese Game Developers Starting to Invest More in the Facebook Platform?
• Facebook Connect Going Live on Nintendo DSi in North America Today

Tuesday, August 4

• Five Minutes Adapts Popular Chinese Social Game Happy Farm for Facebook
• The Top 25 MySpace Games for August 2009

Wednesday, August 5

• Building a Social Gaming Studio Within Ubisoft: Q&A with Omar Abdelwahed
• Playdom Expands the Mobsters Franchise with Mobsters 2: Vendetta on Facebook
• Frogster, Outspark Add Survey-based Monetization from Peanut Labs

Thursday, August 6

• With Booyah Society, Anyone Can Level Up In Life
• Facebook and Twitter Coming to Xbox Live this Fall

Friday, August 7

• Live Gamer Acquires Korean Microtransaction Provider N-Cash
• In Brief: Zong Processes Mobile Payments for 10 Million Users in 2009

Visa is launching a promotional campaign around its Visa Business Network program utilizing Facebook Connect to offer members improved features which should help promote the businesses of the more than 70,000 current users. The promotion is also handing out a limited number of $100 Facebook ad credits to new members, as well as free websites for business owners.

A limited number of $100 Facebook ad credits are available for new members, a perk that was also available with the initial launch of the network last year. Visa has also improved the service itself by making business web pages public and searchable; the original version of the network was only accessible to members and not the general public.

As one of the first large companies to recognize Facebook as a tool for small businesses, Visa has been rather successful in populating their Visa Business Network. More than 70,000 small business owners have joined the Visa Business Network on Facebook since its launch a little more than a year ago. Members can find other businesses that offer similar products and services, as well as those that are in their area, to share information and make connections.

SocialSafe is a new application from iBundle and 1minus1 that allows Facebook users to download their photos, photos in which they’re tagged and profile information to their personal computers for safe keeping. This gives users a way to quickly and easily browse through pictures when they don’t have access to the web, and ensures that all the pictures and information they collect year after year on Facebook is stored in a second place.

The SocialSafe app is not free – after paying $2.99, SocialSafe sends users a license key, which can be used twice to add the application on two separate machines. Once you’re in, you’ll be prompted to add Adobe AIR and link to your information through Facebook Connect. The initial download can take a little while, especially if you have an unusually large number of photos, but subsequent downloads to update and backup should run fairly fast.

Having access to photos and information when not online is a nice convenience, but with nearly every phone carrier offering some kind of access to Facebook, it’s not really a necessity. However, you can never be too careful. The SocialSafe site states that they’ll be adding additional social networks to the application in the future. All updates are free after the initial $2.99, but future versions will require an upgrade fee.

Check out the video to see a demo of SocialSafe in action:

Update: Facebook says no user data is being stored on SocialSafe’s servers, and is continuing to evaluate the app.

As part of an apparent coordinated distributed denial of service (DDos) attack on multiple popular websites this morning, many Facebook users were unable to access the site for a period of a few hours. The source of the attack, which also took down Twitter for hours and struck LiveJournal as well, has not yet been discovered. However, Facebook says service has been restored for most users and no user data was at risk:

Facebook has been known for having a very strong performance record overall, but today’s attack seems to have been coordinated and large enough to affect multiple big sites. Twitter was down for about 2 hours and is still defending against some attacks.

Update: According to Facebook’s chief security officer Max Kelly, the attacks were targeted at an individual known as “Cyxymu,” a blogger in the Republic of Georgia, CNET reports:

“It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard,” Kelly said. “We’re actively investigating the source of the attacks and we hope to be able to find out the individuals involved in the back end and to take action against them if we can.”

Cyxymu’s LiveJournal page wasn’t accessible, but a cached version showed that it was updated on Thursday with a message about the denial of service (DOS) attacks on his accounts on the US-based sites. “Now it’s obvious it’s a special attack against me and Georgians,” the message in Russian said.