In a bid to boost its web traffic and memberships, Facebook is opening up its website, making member profiles searchable by search engines such as Google, MSN Live and Yahoo.

According to the Facebook blog, “Starting today, we are making limited public search listings available to people who are not logged in to Facebook. We’re expanding search so that people can see which of their friends are on Facebook more easily”.

Previously, the public search listing could only be accessible right after someone has sign up. By making the public search listing available to non-members, Facebook said “We’re not exposing any new information, and you have complete control over your public search listing.”

But here is the catch. Non-members can only contact a person listed in the public search listing if they sign-up to Facebook.

Facebook will begin notifying its 39 million members, informing them that they have a choice to remain “invisible” to non-members by opting out of having a “public search listing.”

“In a few weeks, we will allow these Public Search listings (depending on users’ individual privacy settings) to be found by search engines like Google, MSN Live, Yahoo, etc. We think this will help more people connect and find value from Facebook without exposing any actual profile information or data,” Facebook said.

The move is expected to spark concerns about privacy, but given the fact that members can opt out to these changes, there is really no big issue here about privacy.

By allowing anyone to see what its users are doing, Facebook is likely to win more members in the process.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 2:29 pm under Uncategorized.

Read more entries by Ruben Francia.
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