Yahoo just embedded some Facebook functionality directly into its search results via SearchMonkey. When you search for a person on Yahoo, if they have a public Facebook profile, a link to that profile will appear in results, along with a photo and several actions you can take. these include adding them as a friend, “poking” them, sending them a message, and viewing their friends.
You can see how it looks like in the image above, which shows results for Yahoo marketing VP Raj Gossain. The blue links under his name are the actions you can take. These are similar to the deep links SearchMonkey added to Yahoo Search for Wikipedia results.
The links save you at least one step. But I’ve also noticed that the Facebook profile is often far down the results page. I wonder if this will help to change that. By all rights, Facebook should be the default people search, whether on Facebook or on search engines like Yahoo and Google.
Wow, this looks like a step in the right direction for search.
As the searcher, this allows you to spam top personalities.
As the spamee, I would hate it.
Search should be to learn more about a person, not to befriend them. Pls see http://twitter.tEarn.com or http://media.tEarn.com/ to learn more about key people.
Ah I consider this is a little scary
i agree
How is that scary? How is that different from running a search for a friend on Facebook.com itself?
Its brilliant. Its a defensive play and competitive partnership against Google. Only problem is this will likely cause more people to abandon Facebook. Look how crazy people went over the TOS.
Yahoo to offer FB $500M. Watch.
this just proves that yahoo is plum out of ideas
This is in fact a step in the right direction, and Yahoo! is actually getting it right. The web is – every day – becoming more social in nature and that should and will include search. Heck, if someone is a member of Facebook, I can certainly search for them and do all of the above anyway. This saves users a couple clicks.
Now, can you “opt out” is the real question – some folks may wish, as you can with most services and apps – opt out of such an option.
these search monkey plugins on yahoo! search are not default. the last time i checked there were around 120 search monkey plugins. stumble upon, digg to name a few.
Users can select these plugins from preferences and can remove them anytime.
the one that i love is “IMDB Infobar”. it shows everything about an actor/movie on the search page itself.
Wow, that is interesting…scary, but interesting.
“By all rights, Facebook should be the default people search, whether on Facebook or on search engines like Yahoo and Google.”
Are you serious? A search engine should find the most relevant result when doing a people search. Depending on the person you’re searching for, it may or may not come from Facebook.
One more step to becoming the “100% glass” citizen.
Does everybody really give a sh## about our constantly fading privacy?
I mean, can we actually be THAT stupid as a species?
It’s just showing your public, searchable Facebook profile. If you don’t want to appear, switch it off in your Facebook privacy settings.
“you can see how it looks like”
Yes, I for can this like looks for and see!
You were just poked from the Information Super Highway, would you like to know more… Where is the option to throw a sheep is what I want to know?
you need to login to throw a sheep i bet… like duh??
This is good move indeed…
you want to be my bffg
I am using Monkey Search in my websites and this is very helpful for our website.