Facebook has bought itself a social media aggregation site, FriendFeed, that could help it compete better against Google and Twitter. It's a sweet deal for Facebook, according to Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang, but whether FriendFeed made the right decision is open to debate. Though relatively small, FriendFeed is popular with "uber social geeks," he said, and it could've been a contender.
In a continuing bid to make itself ever more relevant to advertisers and open its doors to the broader Internet, Facebook has acquired social media aggregator FriendFeed.
Terms were not disclosed, but The Wall Street Journal -- citing anonymous sources -- valued the deal at US$50 million in cash and stock.
The move comes as Facebook has begun to open itself up to the broader Internet, giving users vanity URLs for their profiles and making them more searchable on the Web.
FriendFeed Background
Founded in 2007 by four former Google developers, the FriendFeed service allows users to build customized feeds based on information they find and activities they engage in on the Web and other social media sites, including YouTube and Twitter . Users' friends can then see those feeds in real-time.
FriendFeed is a relatively minor phenomenon among mainstream Web users, but it is highly popular with early technology and social media adopters, Jeremiah Owyang, a social media analyst for Forrester, told TechNewsWorld. The site gets about 1 million unique visitors a month, a paltry sum compared to Facebook's 250 million visitors, Owyang said.
"These are the uber social geeks," he said.
Integrating the Services
Integrating the services opens up new avenues for Facebook to appeal to advertisers, and it also gives the company a competitive edge against Twitter, because tweets will be viewable directly on Facebook's platform once the integration is complete.
FriendFeed's services, while simpler to use than Facebook's, can be more daunting to set up, said Owyang, who is active in the FriendFeed community.
Facebook developers will likely make FriendFeed's services more easily configurable, he said, while retaining the ease of day-to-day use to encourage adoption among the site's millions of mainstream users.
Source : ECT News Network
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