Check your privacy settings. The world will soon be able to view your Facebook profile via search engines like Google.
The popular website, which began as a way for college students to interact via the Web, added a new function Wednesday that now allows people without a Facebook account to visit the Facebook website and view the limited public search listings of Facebook members who have not restricted their profiles.
In a few weeks, finding a Facebook member's search listing will be even easier as the network opens up the Facebook search to search engines such as Google, MSN Live and Yahoo.
Non-registered Facebook users will not be able to see a member's complete profile but will have access to the user's name and current profile picture and will be able to poke, send a message or send a friend request via the user's public search listing.
A blog posted by Facebook Network member Philip Fung stated a person's public search listing is not exposing any new information and users still have complete control over their privacy settings. Users will only appear in searches outside Facebook if their search settings are set to everyone,"" according to the blog.
""We're expanding the search so that people can see which of their friends are on Facebook more easily,"" Fung wrote. ""We think this will help more people connect and find value from Facebook without exposing any actual profile information or date.""
However, expanding the network is not what some college students had in mind. UW-Madison junior Annette Daehler said Facebook has lost its appeal to her because it is no longer as enclosed as it once was.
""I joined Facebook so that I could be friends with people in my network, not so that people could go on Google and search my name,"" she said. ""I'm not on MySpace for a reason.""
UW Journalism and Mass Communication associate professor Greg Downey, who has a registered account himself, said the motives behind the booming Facebook network are probably profit-based, and the search through Google and other search engines is just the next step in trying to obtain as large an audience as possible.
""I think what they're planning is so that, if you're looking for your long lost high school or college friend and you start with Google, you'll be led to Facebook if that person has it,"" Downey said. ""Facebook is going to try to be a hit site for people who are doing these kinds of searches anyway and getting, say, classmates.com.""
Brian Rust, a senior administrative program director at the DoIT center on campus, said based on a survey conducted by DoIT, 72 percent of UW-Madison students use Facebook, compared to only 24 percent who use MySpace.
Rust said the new search application added by Facebook ""seems pretty harmless.""
""If you're going to be concerned about your name being in Facebook and being searchable, then you should also be concerned about it in the other hundred places that somebody could find your information,"" Rust said. ""Getting your name removed from other sites on the Internet, or even just from Google's archives, is pretty much impossible.""
Downey said it may be a combination of both.
""They want to feel that they're safe and exclusive, but at the same time they want everyone to be available on Facebook so they can use it as a thumb book and find anyone they want,"" he said.
