The Truth of Facebook's FriendFeed Acquisition

As I'm sure most of you know, Facebook decided today that it was going to buy FriendFeed. August 2009 acquisition that significantly influenced Facebook's News Feed development.

My opinion might be a little biased... I just discovered FF recently, and I must say that I've been thoroughly impressed with the service so far. I've been spending an increasing amount of time on it every day, and it's most certainly a breath of fresh air from the clogged mob-congestion of Twitter. FriendFeed focused on content aggregation and discussions; Twitter was becoming crowded.

So apparently someone at Facebook realized this and decided to join forces.

So what is Facebook after? Absorbing the competition? I don't think so. Did you know FriendFeed is operated by only 11 people? And it rocks! That's definitely 11 people who are extremely talented and know exactly what they are doing. Something Facebook needs. Classic "acqui-hire" for talent like Paul Buchheit (Gmail) and Bret Taylor (future Facebook CTO). They have been trying to put something together that works as well as FF for a while now. The two merging might not be that bad, as long as FF marches on. My last favorite social site, Pownce, was shut down when Six Apart purchased them for the creation of Motion—an utter failure. Pownce: Twitter competitor acquired by Six Apart, then shut down for failed Motion project.

Update

Luckily, the two companies announced today that FriendFeed will continue to remain a separate, fully functional entity from Facebook. Facebook will be integrating features of FriendFeed. Good news! Let's see if it happens. FriendFeed continued until 2015, but Facebook integrated its innovations (real-time updates, Like button).

Tags: FriendFeed, Facebook