Social Networking giant Facebook announced early this morning that they are now allowing public searches by people without accounts. The public search listings will be limited to very basic information (see below) and Facebook was quick to announce that registered users have complete control over their public search listing (sort of in the LinkedIn model). The reason behind this makes total sense, if you Google a friend it would be nice to see if they are on Facebook or not. I guarantee that other Social Networking services who previously kept this information private will follow in Facebook’s footsteps. The “Public Search listings” should start to show up in Search Engines sometime in the next few weeks. It should be interesting to see how “People Search Engines” like Spock, Wink, Zoominfo and PeekYou will be affected by this…
