Facebook Snaps Up FriendFeed

By Kenneth Corbin | August 10, 2009
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Social networking heavyweight Facebook said today that it is acquiring online sharing service FriendFeed for an undisclosed amount.

FriendFeed provides denizens of the social Web with a hub to monitor the activities of their pals across an array of participating sites, including Facebook, as well as other popular spots on the Web like Google and Twitter.

"Since I first tried FriendFeed, I've admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

FriendFeed will continue to operate normally as the companies plan their integration. There was no immediate word on how Facebook plans to incorporate FriendFeed's technology into its own community, which has become the world's largest social network.

Facebook said FriendFeed's four founders, each veterans of Google, and 12 employees will take positions with the Palo Alto-based firm.

One of the company's founders, Bret Taylor, said the two companies "share a common vision."

"Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we've developed at FriendFeed to Facebook's 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook's passionate engineers to create even more ways for you to easily share with your friends online," Taylor said in a blog post.

Preliminary reactions among the FriendFeed community varied, with comments appended to Taylor's blog post ranging from amiable messages of congratulations to angry users who worried that FriendFeed's simple, community feel would get lost in the larger, more feature-filled Facebook.

Many observers have noted that Facebook's period updates to its news feed feature came to closely resemble the main feature of FriendFeed.