Facebook buys FriendFeed: Is this a big deal?
Surprise! Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, a Bay Area-based social-network feed aggregation start-up.
"Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends," FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor said in a release. "We can't wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we've developed at FriendFeed to Facebook's 250 million users around the world."
TechCrunch reported the news on Monday, a matter of minutes before Facebook confirmed the acquisition.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say it: This is not as ridiculously huge of a deal as the Silicon Valley hype machine is going to have you believe.
Basically, FriendFeed has been coasting on a lot of hype and not a lot of mainstream recognition, and it's not a bit surprising that it would be seeking an exit at this point. Facebook acquired it for its talent; prior to FriendFeed, Taylor was part of the team that helped launch Google Maps. So the real story here is that Facebook made the rather expensive hire (and we don't know the terms of the deal) of some very talented former Googlers. FriendFeed's co-founders "will hold senior roles on Facebook's engineering and product teams," according to the release, and the rest of the company's 12 employees will also join Facebook.
This would also be consistent with Facebook's minimal past acquisition history: the company bought little-known start-up Parakey two years ago with the primary objective of getting its founders, the creators of the Firefox browser, on board. It's also well-known that Facebook tried hard to acquire Twitter--which would've been a far more significant acquisition than FriendFeed--and was turned down. (Well, there was also ConnectU, whose assets Facebook acquired pretty much just to get that pesky lawsuit off the table.)
The release from Facebook repeatedly hinted that this is about talent more than product.
"Since I first tried FriendFeed, I've admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information," Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the statement. "As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use."
Yup.
"As we spent time with Mark (Zuckerberg) and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they've built, and their desire to have us contribute to it," FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit, another ex-Googler who was instrumental in building Gmail, "It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook's engineers are about creating simple, groundbreaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group."
But Facebook director of product Christopher Cox said to CNET News later, "I wouldn't call it a talent acquisition." He elaborated, "We really have a vision that's focusing on Facebook being not just a destination but being a service...We think FriendFeed's been focused on how that's going to work in an open way, and that's something we're excited about, not just the people but the product they've built."
FriendFeed earned praise from prominent voices in Silicon Valley--most notably Robert Scoble--but its aim to aggregate all of a user's social-networking activity feeds in one place didn't catch on with the mainstream. But Facebook eventually began to mimic the FriendFeed model through upgrades to its central "news feed" feature, letting members pull in select third-party updates.
Bret Taylor said that FriendFeed wasn't shopping itself around. "We weren't up for sale. We had a healthy amount of financing and a really efficient company," he told CNET News. "As we noticed our products were really converging in terms of product vision, we started having casual conversations with Facebook."
It's not clear what will happen to the FriendFeed service, because it sure sounds like Facebook is eager to get its team onto the engineering fast track. "FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being," a post by Taylor on the FriendFeed blog read. "We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team."
Taylor elaborated more to CNET News later on Monday: "Anything that we would do would be more of a transition, not shutting down. I think our users have invested in our product by putting their data in it, sharing it with their friends...We absolutely wouldn't shut (FriendFeed) down."
More to come...last updated at 2:04 p.m. PDT.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline. 
Freindfeed filtered out all the scammers, spammers with their robust community. It has persistent real time search. Go look up the Twitter stream of Obama's election. Guess what it does not exist. Friendfeed is all there babe.
There are literally, dozens of exquisite gems that reveal themselves and than you realize that Facebook, Twitter and Google Wave are copying one thing right now and it is FriendFeed.
But now it is all different. The community is in flux. If you did not know before perhaps it is one of those temporary beautiful things in life that can only be experienced briefly once.
Freindfeed filtered out all the scammers, spammers with their robust community. It has persistent real time search. Go look up the Twitter stream of Obama's election. Guess what it does not exist. Friendfeed is all there babe.
There are literally, dozens of exquisite gems that reveal themselves and than you realize that Facebook, Twitter and Google Wave are copying one thing right now and it is FriendFeed.
But now it is all different. The community is in flux. If you did not know before perhaps it is one of those temporary beautiful things in life that can only be experienced briefly once.
Thank you for an insightful article on FriendFeed. I find it so interesting how we personally use and invest in these networks, especially those which allow us to be personal, and not just a part of some mass produced site that everyone joins. Technology -- only goes so far. It's how we engage with it, connect with people, and 'stay with' a certain product or technology which really creates its impact. Having said that, I am an entrepreneur and always appreciate the smaller, customized service such as FriendFeed staying unique and independent. But as Scoble points out, the R&D team addition could really enhance FB, so that means in Silicon Valley Business speak -- let it roll. I am always aware, however, that these mergers increase the likelihood that good features -- and products -- can be killed as they get absorbed by the larger animal.
What are your thoughts as to if this 1) will increase the personability of Facebook's offering, and/or 2) more focus on R&D with FriendFeed eventually being phased out?
All my best, Pamela
Founder and CEO
UniversalGiving
http://www.universalgiving.org
http://pamelahawley.wordpress.com
Oh wait..I AM.
The animal is one that is an infant at best in a turbulent time. They may need more than a boost to get out of the hole they have dug for themselves. I agree completely- I think you would much rather report about a radical new way for facebook to capitalize in a down market. cheers