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Facebook Buys FriendFeed, a Buy That’s Not About Twitter But Eventual World Domination August 11, 2009

Posted by David W. King in Uncategorized.
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Facebook, the world’s largest social networking site, said it will buy FriendFeed, netting a group of prized ex-Google engineers in the fast-growing Internet business.

Similar to, though less popular than Twitter, the microblogging site that Facebook tried to buy for $500 million in 2008, Friendfeed is an up-and-coming social media startup, which lets people share content online in real time across various social networks and blogs.

This deal is not about Twitter. It is about Google v Facebook.
The impetus behind this deal was driven by two developing trends, trends which will make it impossible to deal with the impending information overload: an ability to publish more and more information in real time and the resulting explosion of data on the web

Referred to as the “Problem of Plenty”, the current seek-search-consume popularized by Google will eventually hit its outer limits — and when that happens, Facebook wants to step in and assume the leadership role

This acquisition of Friendfeed will make this possible. The question asked was: “Is it possible to take the whole web and project it through a single social network?” That is precisely what they are doing with this merger. To consume all the information created, whether photos, videos, micro-blog posts, whatever, smarter tools had to be found. FriendFeed is one such tool.

And to make this possible Facebook bought a solid team to solve this problem. Hewitt has been the driving force behind Facebook’s iPhone efforts. Buchheit invented Gmail, while Taylor helped build Google Maps.

With FriendFeed, Facebook gets access to the Twitter universe and a talented team made of programming all-stars