The image above was a welcome surprise when I logged on to Facebook this morning - There is now a real time chat service, like Instant messenger. At the moment the features are nice and simple (which I like), you can set your status to “Online” or “Offline” depending on how chatty you feel. You can see which of your friends are online at any time.

Thinking about this service after the initial “surprise” is this feature something Facebook users want? For me it’s a place where I can message my friends, join groups, read discussions and occasionally find some good links (SEO related of course). If I wanted to chat to friends I would phone them or use an IM service - Facebook was my getaway from the real world for me - Perhaps I liked someone enough to “add them” as a friend but to actually engage in conversation is a whole other matter.

I’m sure Facebook will add and add to this feature eventually consuming what was once a simple medium to interact into a complicated web of ads and notifications. Anyway - I’m not casting judgment yet and have setup a poll - let me know what you think?

Well it has to be said Google has been anything but predictable regarding Page Rank updates in 2008, having 2 already in 2008. Check your own page rank at Dig Page Rank to see the numerous datacenters are behaving abnormally. I detected this activity before the last PR update, which I was quick to blog about. This could be however a Google link update, the same activity happens then also - Either way, an update is happening.

If you want to find out some more information about Page Rank then visit Google’s Page Rank page to learn a bit more.

Checking on a late Saturday night I have seen that Google UK have officially tried to go “green” by going black. Some of you may remember Google black a while ago created by persons outside Google. On the homepage of Google they have called it “Earth Hour” to help increase awareness to the environment.

In all fairness they have specified that by turning the pixels black it does not lower power consumption but the idea is nice if a year behind the original idea.

I have been contacted by an AOL source who has just informed me that AOL is just about to close a deal whereby they will take possession of Social networking site Bebo with their 40 million worldwide memberships!

AOL plan to reclaim their leading position in social media which will help their overall online strategic position. AOL value Bebo as a “true pioneer of the social web” as it’s the leading social network in the UK, as well as being ranked No. 1 in Ireland and New Zealand and No. 3 in the US. They plan to enlarge their current visibility to a staggering 80 million unique users worldwide which few other social networks can reach.

This move by AOL is a rapid international expansion and will surely make the other major players in the industry take notice.

Remember you heard it here first!

• I did get this info before the official release by email
• The total price is around $850 million dollars

I was randomly searching the web yesterday when I stumbled across a search box within Google’s search results.

Initially I thought it was a direct search function within the site but after testing it just searches the indexed pages that contain the searched keyword(s).

This function can be performed by any site by typing the following code into Google:

KEYWORD site: yourdomain.com

Other related posts on this topic:

• Search box in search results
• First search box