Details on the Facebook acquisition of Friendfeed story that we broke earlier today are still coming in. But we had a chance to talk with Friendfeed cofounder Bret Taylor (pictured right) and Facebook VP Products Chris Cox a few minutes ago to discuss the deal and the product integration plans going forward.
On How the Deal Happened
Cox and Taylor won’t talk deal terms or even if the deal was stock, cash or a mix (likely all stock or mostly stock). Friendfeed has raised just $5 million in an early 2008 financing, and is backed by Benchmark Capital.
Taylor said “this is an 11th hour deal,” (sounds like it was finalized last week and there was quite a party) but that the two companies have been talking for some time. “Things heated up in the last couple of weeks,” he said, after the two were on a panel together at the Real Time CrunchUp on July 10.
Product Integration
We’ve heard from one source that, like the 2007 Parakey acquisition, the deal is largely a talent acquisition by Facebook, and less about the Friendfeed product. Friendfeed has 12 employees, and all but one are engineers.
Taylor and Cox say that the Friendfeed product will live on independently, and eventually Friendfeed will be merged into Facebook. But the Friendfeed team is not being kept whole. Some employees will now report to Cox, others to engineering head Mike Schroepfer. In my opinion that means, long term, the Friendfeed product itself is unlikely to be a big priority.
But Facebook is clearly excited about Friendfeed’s ability to innovate and launch new products. Taylor said “The basic idea is that Facebook doesn’t want to disrupt the product…they’ll take a lot of ideas that work well on Friendfeed and see how they apply to Facebook, and over time they’ll look at how to integrate the products.”
He also said that Friendfeed and Facebook agree on a few main philosophical points around openness. “Facebook’s focus on Facebook Connect and openness is also a central tenet of Friendfeed. Some of our ideas on Friendfeed can really accelerate Facebook’s product plans.”
Cox agreed, noting that Facebook is focused on being a platform and a service, and not just a destination site. “Friendfeed’s core values, portability and aggregation of content created everywhere, will happen at an accelerated pace at Facebook.”
Note that translations are rough, I took notes and I usually can’t read my own writing.
Friendfeed will move out of their Mountain View offices and join Facebook at their Palo Alto headquarters shortly, Taylor said.
> Friendfeed will be merged into Facebook
uh, so does this mean facebook will support twitter, last.fm etc. natively? So we’ll go to facebook and communicate with twitter? hmmm.
Facebook already supports Last.Fm naively through their imported stories feature.
It’s like FriendFeed at a smaller scale though, and doesn’t support Twitter, so we’ll likely see it get updated to be more like FriendFeed over time.
the Real Time CrunchUp made the deal happen?
Solidarity from China. One blocked website acquired by another.
+1
Use the chinese version of Yauba to access blocked sites.
+2
Anyone notice why Friendfeed or Facebook aren’t trending on Twitter?
Haha…that’s incredible. Nice observation.
do you think they blocked it? where is that guy with twitter’s passwords?
I don’t think they blocked it.
It just shows the difference between the Friendfeed & Twitter audiences. Twitter has grown into a mainstream site while Friendfeed was just ’supposed to’.
It’s trending now. Probably just took a while because this news isn’t that interesting.
Seriously, did anybody here still think FriendFeed had a future as a standalone company? Jeez.
BORING. I want more MG articles on Twitter. That’s clearly the direction EVERYTHING is going.
I lol’d
Lazarte: I think you have a crush on Siegler and are curious about what this Twitter-thing is exactly. Come on, admit it.
It seems that Facebook is really goin to build the empire.
I don’t really see Twitter as popular as facebook as it is too focused one service .
Everyone THINKs everything is going twitter, just because TechCrunch says so doesn’t make it that way.
I want news and information when I WANT IT, not when twitter tells me something is happening.
The only people that needs instant news are reporters and bloggers, for the rest of us who make money for a living need the news when we want it. On our time, on our terms, not Tech Crunch or Twitter Time. My Time rules, everyone else’s sucks.
Anyone that is successful in life/business and makes a 100k+ thinks the exact same. I run my life not twitter.
Ummmm… Alot of business guys out there just use RSS feeds, which is arguably more instant than Twitter is.
Almost every blog on the internet supports RSS feeds, Twitter is just a reflection of this in a more mainstream way.
People want news instantly, maybe not from Twitter especially since alot of whats on Twitter isn’t exactly reputable, but they do want it instantly.
Ironically, this makes FriendFeed wildly more profitable than Twitter.
damn. another new API to learn … kidding , sounds awesome
This merger doesn’t make sense. Facebook already has what Friendfeed has, hence the talent acquisition. So don’t expect any drastic product or feature changes.
Think about Facebook merging feeds with friendfeed..wait..that doesn’t make sense. Facebook already has that.
Think about Friendfeed merging Facebook profile..wait..that is how current Facebook is setup.
So…now..what is the point of this?
Enough of this filler. Price?
It is a great achievement for FF which is without doubt the finest app on the web right now. It took me a good 18 months to master FF and love it I do http://friendfe...omaspower/likes
Not bad
wow, 11/12 engineers, now that’s a good company to work with
I sure hope the government looks into this hostile merger
Congratulations to FriendFeed!
FF Co-Founder Bret Taylor was part of a Lunch 2.0 panel with Mozilla and Kosmix last week, and had some interesting comments about what it’s like to build a company in this environment. This news certainly brings a new perspective to his insights.
You can see highlights of Bret’s insights on the panel here: http://www.kosm....com/corp/about
FriendFeed seemed to be a feature set with no ambitions to become a service with a brand. So many new things being added so fast (compared to other services where a single change would throw users into a fit).
As the FF team is pulled in deeper, I’m just hopeful that noreply@facebook.com goes away finally and Facebook gets serious about their email offering.
just wait for google wave..
Mike, is the price in the rumored $25-30Mill?
Clearly, that would pay for investors.
“But the Friendfeed team is not being kept whole…”
I shorten my prediction of the FriendFeed website shuttered to nine months.
see how much face book paid: http://bit.ly/10aVmY
You may think I am a little old fashioned because I dont use friendfeed or facebook, but I do use Twitter
Mike,
Now that you are so excited with your new Google voice, why didn´t you take advantage of voice recording? You should have recorded the conversation and post it!!
I think it is a preference choice as Facebook and Twitter are very different and their uses are also different.
I actually use both.
In any event, I think it is a smart move by Facebook if this is true.
HollyM
http://www.thessayist.com
FriendFeed will cash out and sink to the bottom of the Facebook ocean.
Yeargh, matey.
Tudor Bossman (the guy who posted the party picture) says that the photo has nothing to do with Facebook or FriendFeed co.’s.
Great, so they’re already tearing things apart. Classy, Facebook, classy.
Could this mean that Google has a better shot at acquiring Twitter now that Facebook would presumably back away from a potential deal? Think Twitter and Google Wave!
Which other companies would Twitter even consider selling to?
Microsoft? No way?
Yahoo? Seriously doubt it.
AOL? Not a chance!
MySpace? Doubtful.
Personally, I would have cashed out long ago.
i ‘m gonna miss twitter … a bit. i liked the birds. RIP Twitter 2006-2009 †
Why sell now if you can make much more money by staying independent? For platform credibility, independence is crucial.
Acquisitions are for cowards.
If Twitter gets acquired by one of the giants, the other giants will totally pull out of it and fight it. Currently, everybody is using Twitter.
How much was the deal anyone? around 10 million? 20-50 million? it shouldn’t be above 40 to 50 million though?
Definitely something that Facebook had to do…and great for FriendFeed.com. Congrats to the friendfeed team.
Real time search is definitely an incredibly functional tool. A good website in this space is gethighnote.com, which has search as well as track and share. It’s results are pretty useful and the track has helped me find some pretty cool information that might otherwise get lost.
It’s clear the battle to be the online leader social network is now between facebook and twitter … twitter has the press and hollywood on its side, facebook as the 250M+ users. Who do you think will win?
Are they different enough to keep their own respective audiences, like Myspace has been able to do?
my best guess is 20 to 30M *tops* – it’s just not worth any more than that, and the purchase was a hiring bonus, not a technology acquisition of any real substance (beyond the ideas, which is the brains, and hence the hiring bent of the whole article)
SCREW YOU FACEBOOK!
Be interesting to see how this goes on to develop. Will Facebook get all twittery, or will Friendfeed get more facebooky? I’ve got accounts on all three, and I’ve really been liking the dev of FF in the past few months. I hope that everything can integrate nicely, since it’ll really benefit the business.
Speaking of which, when is DubLi going to merge with one of these companies? I heard rumors recently, anyone know more?
It is good to know that even with companies producing ever smaller advertising budgets in this climate, companies still understand the value that talented employees bring to the table.
Good job Facebook on stepping up and getting the right people on your team to do some actual innovation instead of just cloning every idea (cough: Twitter) that becomes popular.
who cares about friendfeed? only the geek crowd used it anyways – and that’s like .0000001% of the population.
“Note that translations are rough, I took notes and I usually can’t read my own writing.”
Cheers Michael – put a smile on my face and I can face my desk piled high with work with a happy chirrup!
The deal makes sense.
One thing I don’t get is why facebook makes it so hard to export profile updates to feeds which can be integrated into external lifestreams.
A few weeks ago facebook cut off Mini-Feed and now they open up their service to a feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites …
Hmmm…So do you “FriendBook” or is it “FaceFeed” it’s all going to be too confusing! hehehe!
Peace out!
11th hour… meaning, we figured this out at a Defcon party last weekend…?
this means FB will now finally be able to be the uber digital scrapbook of everything you ever do online. better for their ad research, not necessarily so good for consumer privacy.
i initially loved friendfeed until i realized what a composite picture it quickly made of my online life. that was scary. but i know that anyone with RSS could do the same thing, so better to embrace it. even better to integrate it into your software, if you can, before the Wave hits…
so is the FriendFeed acquisition the de facto Facebook Twitter?
FB Connect – Open or closed? Hmmmmmmmmmm
No wonder I have lost so many of my images there and here.
OK, Bobby, you do the same!