So, Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. But what does it mean? Well despite the rhetoric of some that this is a minor deal because FriendFeed’s audience was small compared to that of its acquirer Facebook, or even Twitter, this deal should actually have some wide-reaching implications for the future of how many of us use the web socially.
Talent And Features
Let’s be clear, from what all involved parties are saying, this was a talent acquisition. Facebook has no need to integrate the entire FriendFeed service into its site which has over 250 million users. Actually, it already has a FriendFeed, its News Feed. But as we’ve pointed out numerous times, Facebook’s News Feed was simply not as good as the social stream FriendFeed had created. So instead, what Facebook will do is integrate the best features of FriendFeed, with the help of the people who built them.
Actually, Facebook had already been basically doing that (whether on purpose or not), something which led me to write in my very first post for TechCrunch back in April (appropriately titled “You Will Be Using FriendFeed In The Future — But It May Be Called Facebook”) the following:
But I think it’s FriendFeed that Facebook should be more closely following [rather than Twitter], given what it wants to do with its service. That’s especially true when even more information starts coming into the site by way of Facebook Connect. Twitter has exploded in popularity because it’s so simple — but it’s far too simple for everything that Facebook want to do. But FriendFeed seems to be morphing into exactly what Facebook wants to be.
Given that FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor said that there had been talks between the two sides for a while, it would seem that Facebook understood that. The incredible speed at which FriendFeed was developing and deploying new features — features which Facebook should have — was too hard to ignore.
Social Feeds
And why any of this matters is that an improved News Feed is what Facebook needs to hold off the challenge from the company that once spurned it, Twitter. Twitter is still growing fast, and its more-open nature is turning it into the social platform of choice, something which Facebook used to be.
Facebook has a great opportunity to be the web’s central hub thanks to its Facebook Connect product which not only allows users to sign into other sites with their Facebook IDs, but also brings data back into Facebook from all around the web. But as was evident after the last News Feed (and total site) redesign, it has been difficult for Facebook to figure out how to handle and best showcase all that social data coming into the site.
FriendFeed has been very good at that, albeit on a much smaller site. But it’s not like these FriendFeed guys are amateurs. Almost the entire team comes from Google, including co-founder Paul Buchheit who was integral in the building of a little service known as Gmail.
Messaging
Speaking of Gmail, this is pure speculation, but what if once the News Feed has been updated, if Facebook decides to use Buchheit and co.’s services to build a better messaging system? MySpace just completely revamped their system, and Facebook’s is pretty poor.
Of course, one could also argue that with a killer social stream, it may negate the need for a revamping of the email system. After all, FriendFeed does messaging very well right now with its combination of public and private comments and posting.
Filtering
One aspect that is small but hugely important for the social stream, is filtering. Facebook had been getting better at it with various groups you could place contacts into to sort your stream, but FriendFeed was again, much better.
Here’s a perfect example. When one of your contacts on Facebook posts and item that you don’t care to see, you have the option to hide it. But if they’re constantly posting the same type of item, you can only either hide them each time, or hide that entire user. With FriendFeed there were several more options, including hiding elements from just a certain source, as well as automatically unhiding items if a friend had “liked” it.
I could go on; let’s just say FriendFeed’s method is much, much better.
And Twitter? Yeah, they badly need filters, pronto.
Search
Twitter Search has shown a glimpse of the power of being able to get at up-to-the-minute information in real-time. But again, FriendFeed does it better. Twitter search isn’t able to scan farther back then a couple weeks, but FriendFeed search scans the service’s entire history.
And FriendFeed search actually does update in real-time. This constant flow may annoy some users, but FriendFeed smartly implemented a system that pauses when you hover over one element. Twitter has been experimenting with real-time refreshing of search on its new widget, but the main search product still requires a manual refresh.
And Facebook search? Well, they finally rolled out a revamp of it today, after several weeks of testing. Previously, it was quite bad, scanning only static information. It’s better now, but still not at the level of FriendFeed search. Down the road, this acqusition should help that as well.
The Open Debate
But today’s acquisition also extends beyond that of Facebook’s services. A lot of current FriendFeed users are expressing displeasure with the move because they saw FriendFeed as a true bastion of hope for an open social stream versus Facebook’s closed method. While Facebook’s Chris Cox is saying the right things today about Facebook’s desire to be open, and there has been some progress, the process has been really slow. And plenty wonder if Facebook really wants to be open at all.
The same people also see Twitter as more open, but still relatively closed use of the social stream, because its APIs are limited. FriendFeed, which recently launched a new version of its own APIs had the respect of the developer community for their openness, if nothing else. Now, a lot of users are upset at the prospects of a very open service being lured behind a wall.
The Twitter Paradox
Something else that is interesting in all of this is just how reliant FriendFeed has been on Twitter as a source of its data. We saw this first hand the other day when Twitter went down (and cut off its APIs) due to the DDoS attacks. FriendFeed was much, much quieter without the tweets coming in.
Facebook has applications that allow you to import your tweets to update your status as well, but as we’ve seen, neither side seems to particularly care when those applications just stop working for weeks, or break.
The FriendFeed team clearly saw the value of Twitter in their ecosystem, but with Facebook, it’s wouldn’t be surprising if the emphasis will be less on Twitter, and more on Facebook’s own status updates. But if Facebook is smart, they may let FriendFeed do to its News Feed exactly what it did to the FriendFeed stream, which is open it up to all those Twitter updates.
The reason is that while Twitter itself remains important in that scenario, it’s possible that with Facebook’s 250 million plus users, a lot of the conversation (meaning comments) will start to take place on Facebook (just as it did on FriendFeed). This will slowly devalue Twitter over time as users realized they can have these conversations and cut out the middle man. This happened to a smaller extent when FriendFeed added the ability to post your own messages right to FriendFeed.
The Big Picture
This acquisition is a very smart move by Facebook to bolster its product, especially as it relates to the real-time web. One thing it does not do however, is make Facebook simpler. I’d still argue that Twitter has an inherent advantage over Facebook because it is so much simpler to use, resulting in a much lower barrier to entry. But naturally, with the complication comes a lot more data, and data is ultimately be the key for a larger battle for the web, so it’s a trade-off.
Where this leaves FriendFeed as a service is still up in the air. The team has said FriendFeed will continue to run as-is for the time being, but made no promises about the future. Cox’s comments seem to indicate that FriendFeed will be a sort of farm system for the big league Facebook, which I’m sure will piss off plenty of FriendFeed devotees.
Eventually, one way or another, it’s hard to see FriendFeed as it stands now, continuing on. Facebook will begin to take up too much of the FriendFeeders’ time, and it will languish. It’s sad, but that’s the web. Not every service can flourish. There simply aren’t enough users with enough time to use all of them.
So this move was also smart in a long-term sense by FriendFeed because it ensures the awesome technology it has fostered with FriendFeed will continue on, and could one day reach a billion people.
One thing is for certain, the Facebook/Twitter battle just got a lot more interesting. And those are always fun to watch.
[photo: flickr/conerwithonan]
Twitter? I barely know her.
I used to know FriendFeed. No longer.
Facebook is much more useful than Twitter and better platform to build social network. Twitter is going to vanish eventually.
Three Posts in a row about Facebook and FriendFeed! I need something else, please.
Its huge news that TechCrunch is breaking as it comes in. Would you prefer that they wait until tomorrow and do one big post covering the full day’s worth of news and analysis or would you rather have it real time as the news rolls in?
Any guess about the price? something like 15-25M $ ?
best guess right now? something south of $500M
give your guess MG >:).
ok, maybe 35M$, not more.
$55M in shares, 25M in cash.
$50M
5 MM
“Twitter is still growing fast, and its more-open nature is turning it into the social platform of choice, something which Facebook used to be.”
Says who?
I used to use Facebook exclusively. Now, I use Twitter 96% of the time, and Facebook, well, I log in only whenever my girlfriend wants me to see a bumper sticker she sent me… lol
and how? twitter ’s not a stable platform, and they arbitrarily choose who to promote, like bit.ly. do you know anyone making games or anything on twitter?
yes
The decision to promote bit.ly wasn’t arbitrary. There’s significant overlap between the investors of Twitter and the investors of bit.ly
Get your facts straight.
that’s not good enough reason. from a developer’s point of view, i wouldn’t create any kind of twitter-based service, if twitter’s may tomorrow decide to adopt a competing service as official. this is not good practice in an open platform.
Would you like games on twitter then?
i would like to be able to create useful apps on twitter, but i ‘m not happy if twitter decides to turn a competing service to the ‘official’ one.
when you have an open platform, interesting things can happen. Look at how facebook + myspace allowed multimillion dollar companies to emerge through their open platforms
It’s either you or I that are in the sampling bubble.
From my perspective almost everyone I know has a facebook account.
I know one person with a twitter account and it never gets used. I’ve never had twitter come up in casual conversation with anyone.
Twitter just doesn’t seem like that much of a threat to Facebook from my end. However, it seems like Facebook is treating them that way.
How much was the purchase price? 10 mill or around 40 million?
Good purchase by the way. FriendFeed is revolutionary especially the realtime stuff. Good luck to them. I hope they are successful and facebook stock is worth something.
I think ff was going to go down at sometime. They were lucky to get purchased.
40 mills? Are you kidding me? How can Facebook ever get rid of its huge pile of cash if they only throw 40 mills at FriendFeed? Come on.
Ex-Googlers want a decent pay-day, not just some bread crumbs.
$50M, $15M cash, the rest stock options.
http://www.tech...cash-and-stock/
DOJ needs to investigate now
We should all vote, I’m curious to what the general consensus is.
Here’s a poll I set up: Did Facebook Acquire FriendFreed to Specifically Attack Twitter?
http://www.coll...-attack-twitter
Better setup a poll “Do you like this acquisition?”.
How the fsck should I know what Mark Zuckerbrain plans to do with FriendFeed?
But I know I don’t like this acquisition, for sure!
Certainly going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out, especially with Google Wave on the horizon.
Facebook will needEVENMOREmoney.com
Gonna go with Mr. Scobleizer on this one:
RT “Facebook is aiming its big guns at Google NOT Twitter. That is why I am excited by Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed.”
Either way, it doesn’t matter. FriendFeed was supposed to be the Twitter of us nerds and geeks.
Now it’s going to be the Twitter of frustrated house wives and the old school mates you hoped to never meet again, and be it just online.
what is worse than that is they might start applying “family friendly” rules – which means I won’t be able to use friend feed anymore to swear, rant and lure young men into a life of adult entertainment – remember facebook have banned breasts, I just think there is something wrong with that level of censorship when hate groups are allowed free reign.
I’m not really seeing it.
It doesn’t seem like google has put that much work into their social projects. Orkut is rarely talked about. The google follow friend functions are anemic.
A lot of people use google talk but it seems like google is much more interested in the battle with microsoft and in the mobile space.
I don’t really think google is attempting to battle facebook. That battle is already lost.
Facebook should be concentrating on taking over Yahoo Local and Yelp’s territory. I think that would be the easiest to acquire.
If you are talking about online advertising dollars maybe. I still think that someone is less likely to click an add on facebook than on a search site. Facebook is still mostly about personal and not about commercial.
real time is of value to certain very specific sectors, namely entertainment and news: if i want to find a popular movie to watch, i may use twitter’s search. if i ‘m looking for car reviews, i wouldn’t trust it.
There’s little academic/professional information on twitter, so for routine work/school searches twitter is useless (unless you work in media or advertising of course). it’s really two different things that will never threaten each other’s value.
I was expecting this to happen a while ago, facebook is very big.
mine’s bigger.
Mixed Feeling about Friendfeed’s acquisition: seems like most FF users were disappointed. I am concerned and shocked. Why didn’t Google do something.
http://feedingm...riendfeeds.html
RT “Facebook is aiming its big guns at Google NOT Twitter. That is why I am excited by Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed.”
good point neo
They still won’t be able to take on Twitter.
This acquisition sucks!
I have the feeling that many of the recent acquisitions in the industry have been purely driven by fear. Fear of not being able to survive these shaky economic times without being acquired by a giant.
The thing all these guys don’t tell you: Giants are prone to failure, too. They’re even more prone than a small company as they aren’t agile and carry a lot of cruft.
So all these guys are saving are their own multi-million exits. Not untypical for ex-Googlers. Shame on them, greedy bastards.
Besides, Facebook sucks. Even more so than Twitter which at least believes in itself and its independence.
Facebook is the Google of tomorrow. They pretend to be nice whereas they’re actually evil.
I’ll delete my FriendFeed account for sure.
Its time for twitter to start making money, because it won’t be that much popular after few years.
are you crazy? First of all, it’s time for Twitter to make their damn service stable in order to be suitable as a platform.
No stability = no platform = no money.
You got banned from twitter?
Anecdotally I think users still see FB as an environment to replicate EXISTING *real world* connections and conversations online.
I think twitter’s power is that it can be used like this but can also be used to create many other connections of value (depending on how each user finds value with the service – news, gossip, offers, connecting to celebs, creating a persona, being part of an ultra connected environment, mashups and data mining etc).
I know I personally use twitter to connect to new sources, people, celebrities and users of my website that there is no way I would want to share in my personal social space.
People often claim using privacy options in facebook is the way to go but I am not interested in taking the time to this. I seem my connections as trusted or untrusted and place them in the relevant space.
As a fan of FF, I hope the changes won’t force me to sign into FB. Let’s hope it can remain independent for those who are like me.
I see two problems with Facebook that are impeding them to compete with Twitter: its relationship model, its coolness factor. I don’t think this recent acquisition would make a difference in taking on Twitter. My reasons:
Given the whole Facebook model is based on friend-to-friend or fan-to-business relationships makes user-generated content value less relevant. I mean, how many friends relationships are you capable to manage? That model will take the social network to a point of saturation (looks what happen to MySpace).
On the other hand, Twitter’s dynamic content-driven model based on simplicity and “followers” makes it highly valuable in the long term.
Unless Facebook dramatically changes their social graph to include other type of user’s relationships, I don’t see them playing an important role in the micro-blogging space.
fb fans is the direct analogue of twitters ‘followers’, now if you could also post directly to your fb pages directly from your home page or from 3rd party apps, it would be great (i believe it’s coming); the coolness factor is not so relevant; fads come and go pretty fast.
Wrong analogy: a FB fan can “follow” a business page, but a page won’t follow a fan. That’s the very basic difference from Twitter’s “followers” model: the conversation is in both ways.
still a page can send updates to users and respond to their comments (that’s their major difference from twitter).
it doesn’t really make sense for a brand to follow users, other than to flatter them; the vanity factor is missing from facebook pages
the thing about facebook is this whole twitter-like functionality is just a subset of the site.
Great Article!!! I was very happy to ready it all. thanks for the info.
I love friendfeed more than twitter, it’s better for discussions
I love facebook better.
This more looks like pay out to Benchmark capital. ROI of 3x of $5m investment in 6 months. really impressive.
ff founders did not have guts to hold on and become big and investors obviously pushed them into M&A.
… But Google will not panic, they have had set their course and you can see where they are going if you look at reader. it has all social elements. Followers, followees, likes, shares. has twitter like virality and its pushing it towards Wave. there will not be twoogle
so is the FriendFeed acquisition the de facto Facebook Twitter?