Μια εικόνα είναι 1000 λέξεις αλλά στην περίπτωση της εξαγοράς του FriendFeed από το Facebook αυτό σημαίνει 250+ εκατομμύρια χρήστες να ενώνονται με real time δεδομένα και τόσα πολλά geeky χαρακτηριστικά που καθιστούν το FriendFriend μοναδικό αλλά όχι τόσο mainstream όσο το Twitter.
Προς το παρόν τα πράγματα θα παραμείνουν ως έχουν για το FriendFeed.com και το FriendFeed API αλλά δεν θα μου φανεί περίεργο αν τους επόμενους μήνες δούμε τα Likes του FriendFeed να γίνονται ένα με τα Likes του Facebook ή τα σχόλια να μεταφέρονται με τρόπο τέτοιο ώστε να μην ξεχωρίζει αν πρόκειται για API call αλλά υλικό που δημιουργήθηκε στο FriendFeed και εμφανίζεται στο Facebook ή το ανάποδο. Με το Facebook Stream να έχει γίνει ήδη αποδεκτό από όλους, η εξέλιξη των πραγμάτων είναι δεδομένη και σίγουρα δεν ευνοεί το Twitter.
Update: Ακολουθεί και το επίσημο press release από το Facebook
“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-founders. 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.
