August 10 2009, a deal is agreed upon between Facebook and FriendFeed for Facebook to acquire FriendFeed. At this point details on the acquisition are still very sketchy. It is estimated that the deal is worth a cool $50 million. But the question I suppose everyone is asking is, how will this affect Twitter?
Read about the acquisition on the Facebook press release as well as a FriendFeed note on their blog confirming the announcement.
Facebook certainly has a large user base. FriendFeed has an unreal Team which includes an all-star cast of ex-Googlers. Perhaps best known of these is Paul Buchheit, who is responsible for creating Gmail, pioneering some of Google’s early and very lucrative advertising products like adsense, and coining Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto. Other ex-Google co-founders include Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, and Sanjeev Singh.
FriendFeed is a real-time feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates, as well as any other type of RSS/ Atom feed. FriendFeed is a service that is similar to, but not as popular as Twitter, the micro blogging site that Facebook tried to buy for $500 million in 2008, according to sources.
FriendFeed has done a few things well. Not surprisingly, with their Google Stars, search is at the forefront. Their real-time search engine is much stronger than Twitter’s in terms of interface and usability.
Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Facebook has more than 250 million registered users.
Together it seems like a marriage made in heaven. Together both can offer users a little bit more than what Twitter can. FaceFeed/FriendBook, or what ever you might want to call the merger, aims be a one stop shop for all your social networking updates, news items and live search.
Facebook, with its huge user base advantage, would be a much bigger meeting place for internet users once its Twitter emulation (ala FriendFeed) is complete and search is also added to the mix.
It’s not likely that simply adding new features, similar to Twitter, to Facebook is going to be a crushing blow to Twitter.It does however hamper some opportunities that Twitter might have had for growth and expansion.
User Base.
- Facebook – Estimated 250 million users, 150 million active users.
- Twitter – Estimated 20 million users, 7 million active users.
- FreindFeed – Estimated just over 1 Million users
- Twitter – Fastest growing user base in 2009
What do you think of the deal? Will the deal be a Twitter killer? Leave you thoughts in the comment box below.
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