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Zuckerberg snaps photo of desk; new Facebook layout 'leaked'?

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg takes an innocuous-looking photo of his desk, that includes a motivational poster, and his MacBook. But what is that on his screen?
Written by Zack Whittaker, Contributor

See this? Looks relatively innocuous, with your eyes focusing on the poster sat besides Zuckerberg's MacBook. "Stay Focused & Keep Shipping", it says, in bright red letters, as the rest of the image is doused in a blue-lens filter.

Mark Zuckerberg uploaded the photo to his Facebook profile last night, within an hour of the S-1 filing, where his company --- the world's largest social network --- declared its intentions to float on the stock market.

But what's that on his screen?

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Take a closer look. It's not easy to see, but look towards the top of his screen. Can you see it yet?

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What's that giant white space across the top of his Facebook profile page? To me, it looks like a giant search bar, missing the traditional Facebook logo, and sporting only the shortened version. This could spell two (or maybe three) things:

Facebook is ramping up its efforts in taking on Google+: Seeing as Google+ is currently the main Western competitor to Facebook, it may not come as a surprise that the two companies are locked in a bitter rivalry. Just as Google brought out "Search Plus Your World", it could be Facebook's answer to strike back at the search giant. Comparing the apparent massive search bar on Zuckerberg's screen, compared to the new and improved Google search bar, the two do look remarkably similar.

Facebook is about to take on the search market: Facebook currently works with Microsoft --- for which the Redmond giant has a 1.6 percent stake in --- to bring Bing search to the social network. Just as Microsoft brought its Bing search to Yahoo as part of efforts to take on Google, it could be that either Facebook is going it alone in the search market, or is trying to make search a much bigger part of the Facebook experience,

It's an internal prototype, and there's nothing more to it: It could of course simply be a new internal model of what Facebook currently looks like within the company. It does not mean necessarily this is what we will see in the future, but then again, it could be.

Facebook was unavailable for comment at the time of writing.

Image source: Facebook/Mark Zuckerberg.

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