Facebook To Buy FriendFeed
Facebook, the social network, announced on Monday that they will be buying FriendFeed, a content-sharing provider, in a move that analysts claim is a challenge to Twitter and Google, both internet giants. There haven’t been any financial details revealed from Facebook about the purchase, nor have they said how they intend to use the service and technology offered by FriendFeed.
Through the deal, the social network will acquire an executive team that includes former Google stars Bret Taylor and Paul Buchheit, who worked on the launch of Google Maps and Gmail, as well as Sanjeev Singh and Jim Norris, who worked on the maps and mail applications too. All four of the Google stars are also the co-founders of FriendFeed and will have senior roles on the engineering and product teams for Facebook.
In addition to the executive talent, Facebook will get a subscriber base filled with social media power users from Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other websites who use FriendFeed to share content from the sites. In terms of technology, however, the content-sharing provider doesn’t have anything that no one else has, but they will provide the social network with better technology to expand their initiative to open up the site to share content with others.
FriendFeed was founded in October 2007 and currently has 12 employees. Facebook says that they have plans for the company to operate normally for now, while the team determines a long-term plan for the product. According to ComScore, Facebook was the 8th most visited website in April with 67.5 million visitors.