With all the hoopla over the Facebook’s $50 million acquisition of FriendFeed today, it’d be nice to see how it actually went down. And now we can, thanks to pictures FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit, who posted some pictures of the two sides immediately after signing the deal in the wee hours of the morning.
As you can see in these pictures, this deal was obviously important enough to Facebook that founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself is there. Also pictured from Facebook is Vaughan Smith the director of corporate and business development. From FriendFeed, there were three of the co-founders Buchheit, Bret Taylor and Jim Norris (Sanjeev Singh, the fourth co-founder, was not there because he was getting on a plane, Buchheit notes).
I’m still not entirely sure that these pictures are of the deal signing, and not of the crew getting ready to play a game of pick-up basketball.
is zuck wearing swim shorts?
Oh yeah – well I have the same fence, a bigger home and a nicer patio table. So there.
do you own Google?
some. like so many others. google is not the only game in town. plenty of ways to rake in a few Ms, errr I mean Bs.
Zuck is sooo cool man..He’s wearing shorts for such an important meet..
No, facebook, Microsoft Clasilistados.org and a few others
Bill Gates
those are shower shorts…for the man who has nothing to hide, but still wants to
Hahahahahaha Scrubs quote win!!
Easy, guys.. Zuckerberg puts his comfy-shorts on just like the rest of us – one leg at a time. Except, once his shorts are on, he makes multi-million dollar acquisitions.
I guess RICH ppl wear extra-ordinary stuffs!
They all look happy… I would be too if someone handed me 50 mil in cash and stock.
At 50 mil, I think you can wear whatever you want…LOL
Wow. Quite a surprise.
way to go FriendFeed. Obviously the ~1M uniques qas only a part of the story, but talent and technology likely much more of the value.
do you really think they know the difference between a basketball and a soccer ball. lol
All startups should take occasional pics like this . . . especially on important days (or nights) like this one.
My phone pics are very prone to blurring as well . . . what phone has the best camera quality for moving objects?
Samsung Omnia.
wow they must be proud doing a deal with a guy in swim trunks
mark is using mac even though microsoft owns 1.6% of facebook
what an ass at least show respect for your search and advertisement provider
Or at least buy a new model MacBook Pro.
yeah seriously, drop that old goat already. i ‘m betting he has a matte screen, though
i know plenty of microsoft employees who also have macs. and a lot who have iPhones.
At least they are allowed to. I bet if an Apple employee sported a Windows laptop, he’d be fired on the spot by Steve.
Not to mention that Microsoft makes Microsoft Office for the Mac, or that it’s routine to run Windows on Mac machines, either via bootcamp or via virtualization
Maybe he uses VMWare to run MS?
Macbooks, the laptop of choice of multi-millionaires
Bernie Madoff used a Macbook too!
Cognitive, but not convincing. What it lacks, but that does not understand. But I will say straight: – light and benevolent thoughts..
someone hand paul two coffee mugs so that he is more comfortable
I’d love to know your guess… who’s buying twitter in the next few days? They obviously can’t compete without more backing. Curious to know what you think… I have and idea but hope I’m wrong.
google…
that’s my feeling as well… they are prob in a room right now. All wearing swim trunks no less. Got to keep it real… can’t wait to see what twitter goes for. This deal hampers twitter’s value in my opinion. No telling what FB and FF have planned. Real-time is web 3.0+. Time to sh!t or get off the pot (i.e., Digg).
Apple: $9.99/month through itunes, you agree not to use facebook for as long as u use it; tweets must be approved by a team of trained experts
Microsoft: windows logon through your twitter account. scheduled outages every monday. “cancel/allow” dialog on every new tweet
AOL/Time warner: “push” tweet advertisements; news delivery with the “pay per tweet” model
eBay: automatic transcription of skype conversations and automatic publishing in your twitter timeline. Business model: Sell data to the CIA
GM: use twitter’s birds as their new logo. discontinue service
I am going with Google, even though I don’t like it. I am guessing that is what you were thinking too :/ It just seems like the next logical move to compete with whatever Facebook is cooking up for is ideas for search.
a) google b) microsoft c) they stay independent and make money. If google and ms don’t pay the money they ask for, they will probably try to make money themselves. I’m not sure though how google and microsoft think they will make profit with twitter. I’m also not sure how facebook can make a profit either. They are all in the same boat.
isn’t it too late for anyone to buy twitter now? you’re supposed to sell high
Just wait and see what fb will be in the future.
It’s working fine for me. Might have been a temp problem.
Can’t think of a better setting for this acquisition – over a picnic table in the middle of the night in what looks like someone’s back yard. Classic.
Where is the story for the $50 million?
You are linking to original one which says the price was not disclosed.
two links, click on the first one “$50 million”
Thanks MG.
12 months and these photos will be burned in effigy.
Blurry pic? Don’t they have enough resources to take a clearer picture or maybe hire a guy that doesn’t shake the camera…hehe
Zuck: “I’m on a boat!”
Paul B: “A big blue watery road.”
Zuck: “Eff trees, I climb buoys!”
I can see a mermaid in the background!
Guys, im really going to ask an honest question maybe for some of you it’s obvious but..well i wouldnt ask if i knew..
How can friendfeed worth so much? At first sight it looks like a simple thing?
What’s under the hood that makes it worth so much?
Thanks for anyone who is kind enough to enlighten me.
Part Of their written agreement includes inflating the price for advertising purposes. Maybe mz just paid 2M to each… wake up guys, don’t need to be an Attorney to know that
It’s not that it’s “intrinsically” worth that much. It’s more that FriendFeed had deep-pocketed investors who didn’t *have* to sell the company. In other words, to be able to buy the company, any acquirer *had* to offer a price that was enough for FriendFeed investors to *want* to sell.
That’s what determined the price, rather than some “sum of the parts” valuation of FriendFeed technology. People can argue that the price paid was expensive for what’s pretty much a “group hire” (I think most people would expect FriendFeed’s technology to be canned sooner rather than later); but remember the cash component of the deal was $15M, with the rest in (possibly over-valued) stock, so it was perhaps not as expensive as it might seem from the headline figure.
Wow, did Mark really wear like this on a business deal?
what did you want him to wear? what you wear every morning when you goto your disgusting Job cos you’re a coward employee?
i also sometimes go to work naked (i work from home)
Nice to see biz done that way as it should be…
Great Post!
Wow, it seems that they’re planning on some world domination scheme or something.
selamat siang teman2
Hey Paul .. where is ur black T-shirt .. Good deal
a certain level of professionalism would be great, not much of a pic to show your grand kids of the “big” deal that you scored…
what big deal did you close other than a 9 to 5 Job at macys, in order to dictate what professionalism is?
War
curious to see how this turns out
They sold cheap, but they probably felt their window wouldn’t last. With Twitter and FB going at it, Friendfeed must have felt like they were caught between the dog and the fire hydrant. So it was make or break.
“the revenge of the nerds”
Looks like an elaborate game of spin the bottle!
i wonder what is on the plate with the fork. and what’s under the towel in the first pic
LOL, the deal was “important enough for Mark Zuckerberg to be there.” Um, yes, anytime you spend $50 million, the CEO should probably be in attendance. If I were the FF guys, I would immediately sell that Facebook stock on the second market…
How much funding did FF have? How did the early investors make out?
Teachers can’t get funded. People being forced out of their homes in record numbers. Families in record numbers living in shelters across America. Foodbanks not able to keep up with the demand…
…and a bunch of knucklehead geeks with laptops make off w millions.
sigh…
Btw, I think this was a poor acquisition.
This is an important move and good news for Friendfeed, because despite of great effort in past few days , friendfeed could not come any where close to Twitter. With facebook we can expect to see friendfeed creating lots of difference. I hope facebook will not change its name to facefeed