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From Mashable, among others, we find that Facebook will soon be listing profiles in search engined like Google, MSN and Yahoo. So if you have a Facebook profile and you have not set it to private, I can “Google” you and find your Facebook page.

To be more accurate, the full profiles will not return in search results, just something that looks like this (from the Facebook blog) :

So your full listing will not appear, but people will certainly be able to get to it provided that they login (or join).

What does this mean? Well, ultimately it will certainly mean more page views and traffic for Facebook, along with more users signing up for their service. Imagine if you’re looking for your old high school friend. Well, you probably do what many people do and just “Google” that friend and voila! - you spot their picture and profile on Facebook. But then how to get in touch with that person? Join Facebook, of course. Considering the number of name searches that probably take place on Google on a daily basis, this should turn out pretty well for Facebook. To be accurate, other social networks, including LinkedIn, have a similar functionality. If you Google your friend who has a LinkedIn profile, it will likely return fairly high in the search results. The page is a shortened version with only some information but also a neat invitation to join LinkedIn so you can see everything about that person.

 

For Google, it’s more information to index, which is good for them in their quest to index, well, everything. Knowing that you can find friends and old co-workers and the like using Google only makes it a more attractive search engine for users, which of course makes it more profitable for Google.

For the average user, it will open up their profile to more people. That’s either good or bad, depending on your preference and feelings about privacy. Other than name, I don’t believe there is any more information that Facebook will pull from your profile for now. It’s in Facebook’s best interest to get your profile showing up in search more, but from your standpoint you might not want that. Perhaps down the line there will be more opportunities to pull some other information that could help locate someone. For instance, if I don’t remember that person’s last name but I know our High School name then could I find his Facebook profile using Yahoo?

Of course, any Facebook user can control what information is out there in these searches. You can now uncheck a box on your settings page that removes your profile from search engine results. You have about a month to do that, so if you’re worried about privacy you have some time.

Another thing to consider in this development (and in others from similar sites) is how you manage your online reputation, a point brought up here. As more information about you is available to others in search engines, you need to be conscious of what is out there and what people can find. You wouldn’t want your prospective employer (or your current employer for that matter), for example, finding your profile if it had some compromising photos or rants.

Google has formally announced that it will begin trying ads on select YouTube videos. The way this will work, according to the announcement, is by having a short ad rise up from the bottom 20% of the video. The ad will have an X for you to close it out if you wish, and if not it will go away after it has played.

If you click on the ad, it will pause the video playing and play another short video in the middle of your video player. Once it has finished (or before if you don’t like what you see) you go back to your video. Clicking onto the ad video will also launch a new destination page for the advertiser, if you so choose. See some screen shots from the Linkin Park video below for an example:

 

On Click:

 

 

You can also see another example HERE - this one sheds a little more light on the relevancy factor, illustrating when these ads will actually show up. Of course with audio-to-text still not very good, relevancy will continue to be a question.

There are, of course, many people not too excited and a quick look at the comments on the blog post indicate that Youtube users are not really looking forward to this at all. But it will probably be a little longer before we see truly how everyone feels. The ads will only show up on YouTube content partners’ content for now (approximately 1,000 partners or so) and I’m sure won’t be rolled out entirely at once. But once users start to see them more, we’ll certainly see things showing up in the blogosphere about it.

I think it’s a step in the right direction. Others have been trying it - VideoEgg, for example, has tried something similar, as some have noted. However in YouTube this will certainly be the big stage for this all to play out on. In the Linkin Park example above, for instance, as the video is letterboxed the ad doesn’t actually interfere with any of the video’s content at all. Even in the Hairspray example, I’m really not bothered. And as someone who generally despises the approach of traditional advertising, I think that’s pretty impressive.

It’s understandable that your average YouTube user will not be too appreciative of the overall situation. While it is the truth, many folks probably won’t be thinking about the fact that Google put $1.6 billion dollars of investment into something that wasn’t making money and needs to find a way to change that. In fact, even though it is the almighty Google and they have a decent amount of cash to spare, if they cannot find acceptable ways to monetize YouTube it might not be long for this world. So while people may complain for now, I think “YouTube with ads” will be better for most than “no YouTube at all.” And this isn’t just for YouTube, it’s for all video sharing sites. There’s an awful lot of bandwidth being used up and someone has to pay for it.

Something has to be done in this space, so here we go. For me, the biggest questions will revolve around revenue sharing, copyright issues around ads and relevancy. I’m excited, should be interesting…

Blogging as we know it today is a relatively new idea and one that has taken the internet by storm. Simply put… Blogs are the newest and best ways for getting any and all news. And for good reason; blogs give anyone with a computer and the internet the opportunity to express thoughts and spread news as they happen from almost anywhere in the world.

So it’s no wonder that some bloggers are now making big money!

While surfing the internet I came across a very interesting Business Week article about just how much some bloggers are making, so check it out:

“How Top Bloggers Earn Money“