Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details now.
At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates.
Obviously Facebook has already built out some of FriendFeed’s functionality so there is some overlap, but there are still numerous ways FriendFeed beats out Facebook’s News Feed setup. One of these is the way stories are ‘floated’ to the top as new users comment on them. And FriendFeed’s system is truly real-time, unlike Facebook’s feed which users have to manually refresh.
But the biggest win here for Facebook is the FriendFeed team, which includes an all-star cast of ex-Googlers. Perhaps best known of these is Paul Buchheit, who is responsible for creating Gmail, pioneering some of Google’s early (and incredibly lucrative) advertising products, and coining Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto. Other ex-Googler co-founders include Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, and Sanjeev Singh.
And so begins the next step in Facebook’s assault on Twitter.
Update: Be sure to check out our interview with Facebook VP Products Chris Cox and FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor, where they share their thoughts on the future of FriendFeed and its integration into Facebook.
Update:
FriendFeed has just posted a note to their blog confirming the announcement. FriendFeed’s Bret Taylor writes that the site will continue operating for the time being, but that the company is still “figuring out its longer-term plans for the product”. Likewise, the API will continue to function for the time being.
Update 2 :: Facebook has just issued the following press release:
PALO ALTO, CALIF.—August 10, 2009—Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.
“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. “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.”
“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founder. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”
Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.
“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “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.”
FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.
seriously?!
wonderful .. if it is true!!
Knoyce.com has both Facebook and Friendfeed as well as many other social network integrated into one. Knoyce will be the next generation Facebook/Myspace. Go to http://www.knoyce.com to join Knoyce!
Do you HAVE TO spam EVERY BLOG with this knoyce horseshit? We get it. You set up a free NING network. Good for you.
fb owed friendfeed $50m for copying all their features right away. Consolidation over on web space with yahoo bing deal, schmidt resignation, etc Lines are drawn, let the battle begin!
+10
I’ll take no for $200, Alex.
Thanks, @knoyce, for helping me complete a training presentation on the proper etiquette for commenting on blogs. Screenshots of your messages illustrate perfectly how NOT to participate in discussions online.
Well said Kawika!
No one will ever use your second-rate knockoff social network.
It’s impossible to understand what’s going on there. The design is cluttered and impossible to parse.
Your business venture will fail. You won’t be forgotten, because you will never have been remembered.
Spamming won’t help your cause. It’s already doomed.
Knoyce?? LOL. You buy that name off of ebay for like $5?
Hip hop version for ‘noise’. LOL.
and btw… it’s spelled “noice“.
And btw, Noice is the valley-ism for “Nice”, it is not hip-hop for Noise. Never was, never will be. So, don’t be such a DOT-NOSE !
Nitiative.com, owned by Ben Noyce, also runs Noyce. Gotcha, Ben! STOP SPAMMING, BEN.
LOL fucking hilarious comments
thats a surprise…
yeah!!..but a pleasant one
WOWEWOWWOW
On each refresh of this post, retweet count adds by another 100….
Yeah, >900 in 12 minutes. Wow.
bad day, facebook does not respect privacy. though i use it everyday!
Agreed. Bad day indeed. FF was great. FB is acting like Micro$oft by merging/buying/stealing other’s technology because they can’t create it on their own.
facebookfriendfeed.com
Who’s going to buy it?
Someone has, haha.
Registrant:
Husani Oakley
91 Vanderbilt Avenue
#3
Brooklyn, New York 11205
United States
Sorry … too easy to pass up.
lol
facefeed.com ? friendbook.com ?
I smell a lawsuit coming.
Facebook need to tweet about it on http://justbought.it to officiate it
seriously!
this is GREAT news for “social multimedia networking” !!!
I wonder if the friendfeed ui/site will disappear and simply become part of Facebook.
Will all FF users *have* to become Facebook users, I wonder?
Interesting times indeed!
The only thing that would make this merger suck total ass, would be if they combine usernames like YouTube and Google did – what a friggin mess that is turning out to be. “Someone has my username, though, that sucks”, damn right it sucks. Did Facebook do it better by having the Friday Night Vanity Name Blitz – is that how they propose to suck up usernames from or for FriendFeed? Think about it. Facebook doesnt need to touch FriendFeed anymore than Google Video needs to touch YouTube.
It’s great!!!
Just startet with Twitter and all of this other networks but I got addicted
. Very nice to find new people from all over the world
Seriously YEAH! Why don’t I get such ideas man :S
and what will this mean for sites like recomigo.com?
is this is a joke?
either way that is the shortest but most intriguing post I have ever seen on tc.
http://blog.fri...ook-friend.html
No way….
Seriously?
OMG!!!
wow! this is HUGE!
I think it’s more MEDIUM!
more details, please.
this might be one of the hottest acquisitions of the summer
reallllly !
I don’t like it.
wow, why bother though?
any more details?
That would be interesting, market consolidation is usually a sign of a maturing industry…
http://blog.fri...ok-network.html
page not found!
Seems to have disappeared…
The blog post is gone now …
It’s up there now (new title): http://blog.fri...ook-friend.html
it will be the hottest news of today!!
Today isn’t April 1st is it?
Holy shit.
HUGE news! It’s a good match.
They just acquired the best possible R&D department
. Congrats to Brett, Paul,etc.
-jlb
This is a very big move for Facebook and definitely now they are up against Twitter, but at the same time if we Twitter provides 80% of content to Friendfeed.
Will facebook integrate FF capabilities or just keep it as separate entity to compete with Twitter?
Nice.
wow, this is a very interesting development. VERY excited to see what they have in store.
no offense to TC. but i will believe it, when i read it on another site.
Why bother even coming to a tech news site if you’re just going to say crap like that when they break a story?
http://blog.fri...ook-friend.html
-1
whoa, interesting implications. Does this mean Facebook wants to own the real-time web? Makes me think so.
wtf? why?
OMG
niiiiiice!
Crazy
Are they seriously thinking Twitter is their ultimate goal? Gosh.
Twitter has 43 million uniques as of last week
More than 250 million active users as of today.
Yep, Facebook better watch their ass?
Cearly, if FB wants to be like Twitter, then we all need to get ready for lots more FailWhales – especially if Georgians want to speak their mind. Again.
rand() isn’t a reliable source of information.
Pretty Cool!
HollyM
Facebook need to tweet about it on http://justbought.it to officiate it
*facepalm*
Wha-wha-wha-whaaa?
This is indeed a big deal.
I find myself using Facebook less and less in large part because their UI keeps getting worse & worse (IMHO) and the features I do really love about a large scale social network – such as using it to organize private but socially tied events (private events with multiple organizers sending out invites is a great use case for a social network) are the very features Facebook has deemphasized and where I routinely encounter errors on use.
Friendfeed in contrast though I’ve never been a huge user (don’t see the level of engagement others see there) has a lot of great features and value even without heavy engagement – as a unifying archive of my content & feeds and as a way to filter & scan through 100’s of contacts online activities – in ways far superior to other news feeds (such as Facebook’s)
It will be very interesting to see if Friendfeed remains a separate & actively developed site and how/if features & functionality merge between the two companies.
Hey Shannon check out Planypus (http://planyp.us) for event organization focusing on multiple organizers and a wiki-like planspace. Not only is it free but you really only need to fill in one field (the title) and let your guests fill in the rest – very collaborative and quick. Give it a shot, thanks! (I am the founder).
the bad news FriendFeed will be dumped to facebook corporate culture that does not listen to users, FF founders listen to user’s requests.
Why they hell it was bought when i just started to enjoy FF and be a kinda heavy users
Here here! THe best thing in that regard for FB Corporate to do is…..nothing. Let FF be FB’s first group of IN-SOURCING.
Fast and furious …
Really ?
Looking forward to more details.
This is good news. I have one less tab open in Firefox soon.
This review sum up the situation at a glance. Nice.
This is insane but not unexpected in the grand scheme of things.
See you later Twitter, you were always doomed to fail despite MG’s constantly splooging all over you.
Twitter’s going nowhere, dumbass.
I guess they made an offer that couldn’t be refused. Presumably it is a good exit for the founders.
Cash or Facebook stock or both?
Absolutely awesome
nice ! cool !
congrats Friendfeed! very nice
Pretty big news here; great step forward for Facebook.
Why is it “clearly a good match” if Facebook was already knocking off their feature set? What are they actually getting in the acquisition? They certainly aren’t doing this to acquire more users.
I was actually scrolling down to consider writing this as a comment.
Just because Friendfeed has some nice features doesn’t mean FB had to buy the company.
Plus the overlap of users is probably huge.
It’s clear to me this was a for-personnel purchase, unless FriendFeed was suffering funding wise and needed an exit.
Assuming not, and the key personnel will be absorbed into Facebook’s engineering teams one has to wonder whether Friendfeed will be dead-pooled?
They are doing it to acquire as others have noted a top flight R&D (for web UI & features) engineering team + a well liked & used but not yet too large site & service.
I’d guess that FriendFeed will continue w/greater Facebook integration and could be seen (and used) as a UI laboratory of sorts for Facebook. I’d also guess that some of what Friendfeed has done on the backend to be fast & scalable will be integrated into Facebook into the future.
I hope it’s not true
can someone say POWER PLAY!!!! It all depends on how well FF features are incorporated into Facebook. Given that way FB has been lackluster in features and been copying FF and other sites… we’ll see how well this move plays out.
May be with this step Facebook will not just have realtime updates but option to search stuff posted in real time. One thing that friendfeed does really well
I agree, it could be the final weapon to dominate in the real time search battlefield.
That’s where money will go, instead of going to Google Adsense’s pockets.
If true, HUGE congrats.
Makes a heckuva lot of sense… interesting to see what FB does to make one’s FB network more “portable” … as this will shift brand loyalty significantly — and is one of the reasons FF is so popular today… wrote an article about this last week here:
http://livepath...snt-really.html
What month is it? Okay..its not April..
Any details? Selling price?
This is interesting. I think Google Wave is going to destroy this type of real-time interaction though.
Yes, with Google Wave and Google Reader that is getting more social features, like Likes and item recommendations based on Likes, Google will win this.
i agree jacinta – something more toward online integrated collaboration layered on social networks, though FB will never give up an API for google that easily…it will be more like FB looking for a tool like this, just like salesforce.com using google apps..but in the former case, i suspect it will be FB using microsoft office live and related online collab utilities…