Techmeme is full of news about Facebook acquiring Friendfeed. The Friendfeed team will join Facebook’s engineering team but they will have the Friendfeed website going for a while.
FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team. As usual, we will communicate openly about our plans as they develop — keep an eye on the FriendFeed News group for updates.
I am not all that surprised about it. After the initial traction, they didn’t go further like Twitter. The explosion of Twitter’s marketshare in the short communications market coupled with Facebook’s implementation of Friendfeed like features essentially closed the doors for Frienfeed. However, they did have their share of die-hard supporters cheer leadered by Robert Scoble. In the end, they took a wise business decision and jumped into the Facebook bandwagon. I am not at all surprised by Friendfeed selling out to Facebook but I am surprised by Facebook’s decision to buy Friendfeed. At this point, immediately after the release of the news, I am not very sure of their rationale but Friendfeed has some of the smartest engineers who were ex-Googlers. That, by itself, makes Friendfeed worth buying.
Congratulations to Friendfeed team for this. I hope that Facebook offers some serious competition to Twitter by opening themselves up a lot more. Recession or no recession, things stay interesting in this part of the world.
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