Facebook purchases FriendFeed
Jinfo Blog

10th August 2009

By Nancy Davis Kho

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On August 10th Facebook announced that it had acquired social sharing service Friendfeed. Terms of the deal were not released (though FriendFeed just recently raised $5 million in funding from Benchmark Capital). According to a blog post by Mashable's Ben Parr just hours after the announcement was released, this marriage has been a long time in the making; the two companies had been in discussion since FriendFeed launched less than two years ago (http://digbig.com/5badwj ). Maybe that $200 million that Facebook raised from Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies back in May was the dowry. FriendFeed allows users an easy tool for setting up a instant, customized feed of data from 3rd party web sites like Facebook and Twitter, as well posting photos, videos, and links. Fans applaud FriendFeed's simple user interface and real-time social content - the latter a feature that Facebook has tried in recent months to emulate. In the press release, Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps, observed that 'Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends.' Taylor's Google heritage, which he shares with the three other FriendFeed co-founders Paul Buchheit, Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh, may be key to the acquisition strategy. There are rumours that Facebook is trying to amp up its search technology, and bringing in the 12 FriendFeed engineers - who among them have played instrumental roles in the development of Gmail, Google Maps, and even the 'don't be evil' Google tagline- could give them more power to do so. For now, Mountain View, CA-based FriendFeed's service will remain unchanged but it's likely just a question of time before it gets folded into the larger Facebook organization. And that could be a major benefit for Facebook users.

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