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| Facebook has indexed almost 2 trillion posts put on the site by its members to make it easier to find them. |
The
modify means that many older posts will now be added to results when people
search for news or information.
The
move is being seen as part of Facebook's attempts to keep people on the site
rather than go somewhere else to keep up to date with events.
It
said options were available for people that did not want their older posts to
be more extensively easily reached.
Bigger audience
Tom
Stocky, Facebook's head of search, said in a blog post that many
people already turned to Facebook when trying to find out how friends and
family were reacting to world events. About 1.5 billion searches are carried
out on Facebook every day, he said.
The
changes that Facebook has introduced will mean members of the social network
will now also see posts by strangers next to those from news organizations and
people closest to them.
"Search
results are organized to help you cut through the noise and fast understand
what the world is saying about a topic in the moment," said Mr. Stocky.
The
post also full what Facebook users can do to limit who sees the older posts
they shared?
Currently
the expanded search results are only available to Facebook members in the US.
The
move puts Facebook into direct competition with Twitter which recently
introduced a similar system called Moments, said Caitlin McGarry on PC
World.
"Facebook
has a much wider audience than Twitter," said Ms McGarry. "So
Facebook's potential reach for its search tools is exponentially larger."