Inside Facebook

Facebook launched Microsoft Live Search integration on the public site today, showing off how users will be able to access Live Search within Facebook.

(Update: Facebook Web Search powered by Microsoft Live Search is now live again. Earlier, the push appeared to have only been temporary - Live Search integration was pulled down from the site after only a few minutes. A company blog post on the Live Search launch was also temporarily taken down.)

Here’s How It Works

When users enter queries into Facebook search, if Facebook’s look-ahead doesn’t find any matching friends, groups, pages, events, or applications, an option to “search the web” appears. The search results page shows Live Search results. As part of Microsoft’s partnership with Facebook (which includes the software giant’s $240 million investment in the company last year), Microsoft will sell the search ad inventory for Facebook Web Search.

Part of a Larger Integration?

It’s not clear if this integration is merely part of an overall integration. As Sebastian Gard of Microsoft commented last week,

Facebook is taking a very thorough approach to how they’re putting Live Search in, however - they’re not just plugging web search in like we’ve seen other social networks do.

Facebook’s Leah Pearlman said about the release,

We think there is the potential for much more and we’re working on a number of other new ways to leverage all the web has to offer.

So it looks like there is much more to come.

A New Battlefront in the Social Platform Wars

Facebook’s launch of Microsoft Live Search integration marks a new phase of the company’s increasing battle with Google. As the Facebook Platform vs OpenSocial and Facebook Connect vs Google Friend Connect platform wars evolve, so now a new battlefront is forming around search. In the very least, the Facebook integration should boost Live Search’s query volume and share of searches over time - and provide a nice boost to Facebook’s bottom line.

While it’s widely known that Facebook and Microsoft are collaborating on implementing Live Search in Facebook sometime “by the end of the year,” there is another Facebook group at Microsoft that you may not have heard of.

Sebastian Gard, Viral Marketing Manager in the Digital Experiences team at Live Search Consumer Marketing, is heading up an experimental effort at Microsoft to drive use of Live Search through the viral spread of - you guessed it - Facebook applications.

The first of Microsoft’s applications, Knocked Up, went live last night. It makes use of Live Search’s image search capabilities, along with advanced photo morphing software from Microsoft Research, to let Facebook users see what it might look like if their friends mated with popular celebrities. The often hilarious results can then be tagged with friends’ names and placed in their Facebook photo albums.

Inside Facebook spoke with Gard about his team’s efforts to use the Facebook Platform as a marketing channel for Live Search, and how his efforts related to Microsoft’s collaboration with Facebook overall.

Sebastian, what is Microsoft doing building Facebook apps like “Knocked Up”?

We’re really just trying to drive use of the Live Search platform. We’re taking this powerful platform and building a few narrow, entertaining applications on top of it. This is the first of those.

We really went into this with a sense of fun. At the same time, we’re Microsoft, and we have access to Microsoft research that makes our apps a little bit more solid and mature than what else you might see out there. We have access to some great code.

How is this achieving your goals at Live Search Consumer Marketing?

Search is very broadly horizontal.  As we compete with Google, if we can come in with a very narrowly focused message, Facebook applications offer us the opportunitity (though a somewhat limited one) to get our message across. We can build on top of Live Search capabilities like image search and pulling in celebrity photos based on search popularity. We could see this applying to QnA and Maps as well.

How does Knocked Up take advantage of the Facebook Platform?

Well, we’re dealing with very photographic content, which seems to do well on Facebook. We also create an album for you and automatically save all the pictures you create there. If you tag friends in the photo, that’s a huge attractor. You can use Knocked Up as a “weapon” with your friends, and get huge threads going.

We’re trusting word of mouth to spread the app, as there’s no way currently to click through to the application from a photo album. We’re going very light on the use of Facebook invitations and requests.

How does your group interact with those integrating Live Search with Facebook?

Live Search is being integrated into the Facebook platform, which is very exciting, through we’re not specifically a part of that effort. Facebook is taking a very thorough approach to how they’re putting Live Search in, however - they’re not just plugging web search in like we’ve seen other social networks do.

Thanks Sebastian. Any final thoughts?

The challenge for us is really how can we keep up a steady stream of ideas like Knocked Up? Can we get the community involved? It will be really interesting to see.

Facebook tonight launched an updated version of their home page design. The visuals have been revamped, but user search has been removed. Public search is still available at this page, but it’s not clear if that page will still live once the redesign is complete.

Facebook said last week that the full redesign would be complete by this week and users would go back to “facebook.com” instead of the current “new.facebook.com” where the new version of the site currently lives. However, that final switch has not yet occurred.

Last week, Inside Facebook reported that Facebook had opened up discussion in Groups and Pages for search engines. Soon, Facebook may make Events public and searchable as well.

The Facebook Directory, Facebook’s search-engine-friendly list of indexable content, is expanding with Facebook’s redesign: while the old directory only includes People, Pages, and Applications, the new directory also includes Events and Groups, spots reader Dan Birdwhistell of BigSight.

While many Groups are already currently indexable, this could mark the first time many Events would be publicly available for search, greatly increasing the number of Facebook events in search indexes.

How will users respond to their Facebook events showing up in Google search results? Facebook will need to do a good job communicating the default privacy settings for Events. It’s not clear that the creators of or participants in events like Gettin’ too drunk on Two Lick, one of the events in the Facebook Event Directory, know that their event could now potentially be accessible to searchers worldwide.