10 August 2009 | Author: Andrew Girdwood Head of Strategy

Facebook acquires FriendFeed

Social networking power house Facebook has bought the social media darling Friendfeed for an undisclosed sum.



FriendFeed is a life streaming aggregator driven by some of the most brilliant minds ever to leave Google.

"Don't be evil", that famous motto from Google (but unofficial motto, as they like to stress these days) came from engineer Paul Buchheit. He left Google to join Friendfeed. Paul's also responsible for Gmail (Google Mail in the UK) and the early versions of AdSense. Paul was Google's 23rd employee. He and ex-Googlers Bret Taylor, Sanjeev Singh and Jim Norris are now senior members of Facebook's engineering team.

The press release issued from Facebook holds some clues as to why the social networking monster was willing to spend money to buy FriendFeed.

"'Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,' said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps."

Facebook's already decided to copy a number of FriendFeed's tactics and innovations. This purchase will ensure that Facebook stays ahead of the innovation curve.

The growth of Twitter is the reason behind the acquisition. The instant messaging features of Twitter, the ease of contact and the organically viral way in which conversations span across the web has left Facebook's previously walled garden features looking somewhat lacking. Facebook will be hoping that FriendFeed's life streaming features can counter Twitter.

FriendFeed provides a single channel for users to follow their friends online activities. Members can point FriendFeed to their blogs, to Twitter, to Facebook, to Flickr, to delicious and to countless other sites. Rather than hop around the internet or subscribing to dozens of RSS feeds users can simply monitor a single FriendFeed to stay abreast of what their friends are doing online. If friends aren't members of FriendFeed then "imaginary" accounts can be created by FriendFeed users so that their activities can still be easily followed.

Despite being composed of so many ex-Googlers FriendFeed still appears to be Google friendly. Google's Feedburner adds FriendFeed subscriptions onto their RSS user tracking. FriendFeed also makes use of the new PubSubHubbub protocol developed by Google Engineers as a way to make RSS feeds as quick as Twitter.

*Image by Thomas Hawk, published under Creative Commons at http://www.flickr.com / photos / 51035555243@N01/3409151928/." class="">http://www. flickr. com/photos/51035555243@N01/3409151928/.

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