Facebook buys Friendfeed, and Mashable takes a stab at three reasons it’s a great deal.
Facebook, one of the leaders in online social networking, today purchased Friendfeed. The sum was undisclosed as well as the future of the Friendfeed staff. Why buy now? It turns out that the desire has been there for some time.
Is it good for you? That remains to be seen. Facebook is likely to become even more of an integration and central sharing tool. Browser integrated sharing, already part of Facebook’s schema would seem an easy upgrade point and one the everyday user will use.
Another good possibility will be borrowing some of Frienfeed’s built in display of items instead of taking the user out of the Facebook interface.
In any case…
The full release from Facebook is below:
Facebook Agrees to Acquire Sharing Service FriendFeed
Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.
“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”
“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founder. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”
Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.
“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”
FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.
Jeremiah Owyang brings up the question, is blogging becoming lifestreaming. It’s a dang good question. Bloggers across the net have taken to using their blogs as a collection point for all of their various Twitter, Friendfeed and other sources. They’ve become aggregation points.
The truth is though that’s a skewed view. Blogging is changing in it’s use. In a way, some folks are taking it back to its roots, the self centered story. Blogs have long been personal bandstands and stories. Tech focused blogs or real estate blogs are really still on the edge of the curve in my opinion.
What’s really happened is that folks have found more effective methods of sharing links, stories, and pictures. They’ve also discovered video, podcasts, and other formats. The push to push out all your ‘content’ via the blog is changing. Blogs aren’t the end all and be all, they’re just another tool in the box.
Myself? I’m actually not lifestreaming via the blog. That’s what I do with Twitter and Facebook. The blog is more focused on a few topics. As a matter of fact, I actually have a few blogs and contribute to a couple other parenting focused blogs. Less anecdotal.
How about you? Has your blog taken to being a life story, an aggregation of your other output? Or are you still blogging on topic?
Friendfeed is showing off their beta version, and SPEED is the word. This real time interface is something akin to the way the public Twitter stream would look, if you could watch it flow past.
The video is just seconds captured yet it shows the rapid updates and flow down the screen. Comments now ‘appear’ under a post, and posts ‘jump’ to the top while you watch.
What will this mean to frequent Friendfeed users? Lists will become the only practical way to view the stream. I’ve set up Favorites, Personal and Professional, but even that isn’t fine enough to avoid a steadily changing stream.
Searches are enabled though, and those create a slimmed down stream of information. Also, creating a list of experts on a topic seems like a possible approach.
How this plays out has yet to be seen. There’s already a Friendfeed room against this change.
It’s a big list, the list of social networking sites out there. The shot above, from FriendFeed, shows the possible list of networks your can import there. It’s simply amazing that the list above isn’t even a large number of those that exist.
There are networks both broad in scope and very niche. Some networks offer many ways to share and interact while others only allow small text messages. Each network offers a slightly different experience than the next, and draws its own type of followers.
Ultimately what’s drawn me back to my favorites is the people. What is it about the people? It’s the interaction. I can interact with them directly, experience the content they created, or just keep apprised of events they are being part of. It’s also about being able to share with these people in some meaningful way.
The sites or tools that best represented that for me aren’t numerous, but they’ve survived by being ones I keep coming back to, even if it’s just to broadcast information.
Facebook – What can I say, this one keeps drawing me back. What has given me? It’s given me access to people I know and introduced me to many I’ve yet to meet. It’s lead me to dinners, breakfasts, meet ups and online networking. I’ve been drawn into reading blogs, watching interesting videos, and learning about people’s lives. We’ve played, we’ve connected, we’ve been charitable. Lots of folks dismiss this site as just spammy. The key is to not wait for the site to bring you good stuff, but to go out and find it in your network of people. The other thing is to avoid signing up for every application you’re invited to. It’s okay and even smart to say no. Those two things will greatly improve your experience.
Twitter – If you are into social networking and aren’t on Twitter, well you aren’t into social networking. Twitter is the simplest site to take part in technically but probably the toughest to do right. It’s one of the sites I’ve blogged the most about. Truth be told there is not right way to take part on Twitter, but it’s so easy to get wrong. It’s best feature is limiting messages to 140 characters. This means you have to keep it short and to the point. This is also it’s biggest limitation. It’s hard to follow one side of a conversation at times. Very little can be reference in a reply. The hidden upside is the huge number of available tools that work with Twitter.
FriendFeed – This tool, mentioned in reference to the photo above, is really an aggregation site at its heart. Though you can post directly there as well. It’s biggest value is being able to see all of the various streams a person creates all in one place. Instead of following me for example in four different networks, you can just follow me on FriendFeed. You’ll get my Flickr updates, my Twitter updates, and more. It’s not just one way either. Users can comment on items in those streams as well as vote them up or down with Like and Hide. It ends up being a rather democratic view of the online world. Great tool if you want to follow someone like Scoble who broadcasts across multiple networks.
Flickr – This site is the one that got me started in social networking. It’s still a favorite. This is first and foremost a photo sharing site. That very sharing though leads to ad hoc relationships, and from there to real relationships. Flickr groups grow organically more as much as on any other social network. The fact that it has groups give it an edge. An additional feature that gives this site an edge is tagging. Every photo can be tagged, as well as groups. Beyond tagging, the descriptions, titles and tags are indexed by search engines. (privacy settings permitting) This means your content isn’t just discoverable by accident as someone stumbles through your stream. It means that someone, on another network you share, who doesn’t even know you have a Flickr account can have the serendipitous chance to find your work, connecting here as well. This just happened for me.
There are other networks I spend time on and enjoy, but these few take up the body of my time online. Each has brought into existence or enhanced relationships. They all continue to grow, and connections overlap more ever day.
You can find me at each of these with the links below:
There are many of us out that blog and use social networks that are fans. Sure, we may not be the top five in the A list, but is our thirst and opinion any less important?
It has recently come to my attention that Pepsi has a room on FriendFeed. This room is purportedly for Pepsi fans. It’s a bit odd of an arrangement though. It seems in this room only a few select individuals can actually post.
Pepsi hand picked four guys to make all of the posts. The rest of us FriendFeeders get to just make comments. Those will even be moderated. Don’t believe me? Here’s the scoop from the room.
Welcome to The Pepsi Cooler. Join us as together we shape Pepsi’s social media future. We’re changing the way we do things and want to have you along for the ride. Contributors include Bart Casabona, Bonin Bough and Josh Karpf from Pepsi and Steve Rubel from Edelman. Note: comments are held for moderation but we will get them up as quickly as we can.)
Pepsi just doesn’t seem to get it on more than one front it appears. They hand pick the talkers; they moderate the comments; they claim you are joining them as ‘we’ shape the future of Pepsi’s social media future.
News flash, that future came without you. Pepsi folks have been talking about you online for quite a while now. They’ve been sharing stories, facts, pictures and forming groups without your involvement. Have you totally missed those of us doing that sharing?
Here’s a clue Pepsi, join the conversation and community, don’t try to run it. Your few fans that realize the room exists aren’t likely to use it. They can’t even post there. Where’s your presence on Flickr? What about Twitter?
It’s not enough to have an idea on those platforms. It’s about joining in and being part of the talk your fans are already having.
On a personal note, I’ve been posting pictures, and writing good things about your Diet Pepsi brand for 2 years now and not a peep from you. Perhaps you’d have noticed that if your team had searched around a bit for those conversations instead of trying to push it down to your fans.
I’m calling you to the mat Pepsi team. Step up your game. Bring out someone on your team that loves your brand and is ready to be the face of that brand on the social networks. Find someone that will find us fans, and those that aren’t, and engage them where they are.
Where are you? I stand here in the midst of web 2.0 waiting for you.
Friendfeed is one of the hottest information and networking sites on the net, yet many a sharer languishes in obscurity. Their pictures of cute kittens go uncommented. Their loving diatribes on the social lives of elk go uncommented. And to top it off, no one comments on their blog posts.
Lack of attention totally due to a lack of worthwhile content? Okay, if it’s about elk, probably so. Chances are though that it’s not the content but the copy that’s lacking.
The current focus for lots of blogs is about tuning the copy for search engines. Is your main blog focus elk, then you’ve taken measures making it easier for Google and Yahoo to find your content. Meta tags inhabit your headers, and there’s a liberal use of related keywords. But that’s the wrong strategy for Friendfeed.
Good strategy for Friendfeed is not about catching the random searcher. Friendfeed is about snagging the eyes of your followers. Beyond that, it’s still about snagging eyeballs, the eyeballs of your follower tree.
Interesting pictures is #1. – Here’s a great example
This sort of thing will net you more than a few eyeballs. Most responded to in my experience are women, bright and shiny things, and lastly anything out of the ordinary. Really want attention, include all three.
Exciting headlines are #2. – How about a recent one…
Mentioning a hot online service isn’t enough in it’s own. It’s about presentation. Strong declarations are key, e.g. Love, Hate, Sucks.
New services aren’t the only headline grabbers. Other hot ones include:
Dropping Names, e.g. Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Madonna
Announcing things, e.g. birth, death, loss of virginity
Questioning, e.g. How do I get people to comment on my blog?
Commenting comes in at #3. – Not just for friends…
One of the least obtrusive ways to get an item noticed is to comment on it yourself. Luckily the Friendfeed bookmarklet includes a spot for your to comment a item when you post. Many posters fail to use that to their advantage.
Posting a link passively, perhaps via Last.fm or Brightkite? Get into FriendFeed and comment on that post. Why does this help?
Answering the why of the post. We now know why you liked it, posted it, or just told us about it.
Being alive. This sends a signal to readers that you aren’t just blindly posting things, such as your location.
Inviting others to comment. It makes it more visible on the screen and provides a bump up as well.
Work in progress
This list is a work in progress. Obviously great posts might be mix of these or be liked for any other reason. Guidelines won’t guarantee lots of attention but they may save you from obscurity.
Got other great ideas for getting attention on social networks? Do share.
If you’ve ever served in the military, you’ve probably picked up a thing or two about just about everything under the sun. You know how to clean up rust, paint, sew on a button, and scramble some eggs. Cleaning and shooting a gun might even be second nature. But what did you learn about leading the online life?
We’ll I’ve put together a partial list of things being in the Navy taught me about social networking. Your comments, lessons learned, and anecdotes are welcome.
1) You can’t go home until the paint is dry – folks want to come on the soc net scene and splash around and think they’ve done it. I got news for your baby; dipping your brush in and calling it done doesn’t work with this crowd. Half done stuff will get you eaten alive.
2) The hours are crazy – oh yeah, social networking isn’t a 9 – 5 and call it a day thing. You’ve got to be available when folks are there to work with. You’ll find too that you can’t just do it part time either and be effective.
3) There’s always someone there to give you a rough time – this is always true in the military and even more so in the world of Twitter and FriendFeed. As a matter of fact, unlike the military where just your unit gave you grief, now they whole world can come out of the woodworks to make your life hell.
4) There’s more than one person in your circle with more expertise – even in a small group, every person has their specialities. In my contacts there are folks that have been online since DARPA started the project, and those that just discovered Twitter today. Just when you think you know enough to be the expert, along comes someone with tons more experience. The web just multiplies that experience, and it gets worse with each contact you add.
5) Your loved ones will hate it – oh, they may be ’supportive’, but trust me, whether you’re out to see, on deployment, or locked in hours long conversations online, your significant other is not happy. You’ll know this is really true when the ring comes off. ‘Nough said.
6) The tech can be cool – few things are as cool as sonar, radar, radio gadgetry and nuclear power. Those things kept me learning for years in the military, understanding how they work. That same coolness factor often draws me to new social networks. I love how things connect, how posts travel everywhere, and how I can chat with video to folks in Australia.
7) There are enemies to fight – duh, of course so in the military, but you’d think if you only added folks you liked, it’d be less so online. But trust me, the crazies seek you out, your friends will go nutz at times, and total strangers will start a personal vendetta against you. Much like international politics it seems.
What about you? Can you fill in three things or more you learned about social networking from your time in the military?
UPDATE: Please check out the follow up post with five more things.
I’ll not spoil the articles for you, but did want to talk to one or two from each article. First from the Why it won’t article, #8, “It pisses bloggers off because all their comments are moving onto FriendFeed rather than staying on their blogs.”
Scoble mentions that your blog post is likely to get more comments on Friendfeed than on your blog. Why? Because your friends and readers are no longer just following your blog. They are following your videos, all three of your blogs, and your Pownce and Flickr streams. They’ve found it easier to catch you in one place, Friendfeed, than checking all of those separately. The concern is that your visitors will go down. Truth here. All that Friendfeed shows is the link. Folks still have to click over to read the article. So maybe they aren’t commenting directly on the blog, but being on Friendfeed makes you a lot more visible.
Then there’s #6 on the why not list, about finding new friends. The argument being that it’s tough to find new friends there, unless you want to find Scoble, Dave Winer and some other uber geeks. I’d contend though, that with this service, as others, that folks aren’t coming without their friends. Oh, they might be the first in their peer group, but rarely are they the only. This is true for me. Early adopter but now a swarm of my contacts is using it. And believe it or not, finding my blog posts and stuff there instead of directly from my RSS.
Now about the will go mainstream side. #5 is one of two favorites from the list, “It is freaking fast and much more reliable than Twitter.” This is so true. I’m often seeing Friendfeed show tweets before I get them on the client I use. Reliable, even more so. Twitter seems to be offline or bugged a noticeable part of the time. Friendfeed is managing incoming data from a slew of sources and yet it seems to handle and keep up with them without error. However, I wonder how dense the user base is yet. Does it have the many thousands of users that Twitter has? How will it fair in six months?
Then my other favorite, #9, I’ll call it the all the cool folks are there item. It’s the fact that many interesting geek and non-geeks alike are on FriendFeed. Scoble mentions a few interesting ones, Barack Obama, and Gary Vaynerchuk. Hey, you’re there too right? This is a deal maker for me. I follow friends of course, but thought and discussion leaders are definitely folks I enjoy following as well. Are some of them just Internet rockstars? Sure. But some are well known in other arenas and just happen to be blogging, and making other social media.
Where do I stand? I’m in the will go mainstream camp. My reasons? It’s only going to get easier to use, and people will become aware of it from mainstream sites, such as Obama’s campaign page. Right now it doesn’t have the eyes of millions, but as it grows and changes, it’s user base will grow and mature as well. The feedback is just beginning to role in for them.
Where do you stand? User? Never heard of it? Following a slew of folks? Or just your real life friends? Bloggers? Politicians? Your neighbor?
. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=dc8fa1c3-e50a-463c-b7d1-3de5c93e2715 "3 Key Reasons Facebook Bought FriendFeed photo")
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f176b897-99f1-4fae-b813-c30931bee228 "Blogging is Lifestreaming? photo")
Loading ...
