Facebook Takes FriendFeed To Take On Twitter
August 10, 2009 ·Filed Under Technology News
So, Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. But what does it mean? Well despite the rhetoric of some that that is a minor deal considering FriendFeed’s audience was small compared to that of its acquirer Facebook, or even Twitter, that deal should actually have some wide-reaching implications for the future of how many of us use the web socially.
Talent And Features
Let’s be clear, from what all involved parties are saying, that was a talent acquisition. Facebook has no need to integrate the entire FriendFeed service into its site which has by 250 million users. Actually, it already has a FriendFeed, its News Feed. But as we’ve pointed out numerous times, Facebook’s New Feed was simply nowhere near as good as the social stream FriendFeed had created. So instead, what Facebook will do is integrate the best features of FriendFeed, with the help of the folks who built them.
Actually, Facebook had already been basically doing that (whether on purpose or not), something which led me to write in my very first post for TechCrunch back in April (appropriately titled “You Will Be Using FriendFeed In The Future — But It May Be Called Facebook”) the following:
But I think it’s FriendFeed that Facebook should be more closely following [rather than Twitter], given what it wants to do with its service. That’s particularly true when even more knowledge starts coming into the site by way of Facebook Connect. Twitter has exploded in popularity considering it’s so simple — but it’s far too simple for everything that Facebook want to do. But FriendFeed seems to be morphing into precisely what Facebook wants to be.
Given that FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor said that there had been talks within the two sides for a while, it would seem that Facebook understood that. The incredible speed at which FriendFeed was developing and deploying new features — features which Facebook should have — was too hard to disregard.
Social Feeds
And why any of that matters is that an improved News Feed is what Facebook needs to hold off the challenge from the company that once spurned it, Twitter. Twitter is still growing fast, and its more-open nature is turning it into the social platform of choice, something which Facebook used to be.
Facebook has a great opportunity to be the web’s central hub thanks to its Facebook Connect product which not only allows users to sign into other sites with their Facebook IDs, but plus brings goods back into Facebook from all around the web. But as was evident after the last New Feed (and total site) redesign, it has been difficult for Facebook to figure out how to handle and best showcase all that social details coming into the site.
FriendFeed has been very good at that, albeit on a much smaller site. But it’s not like these FriendFeed guys are amateurs. nearly the entire team comes from Google, including co-founder Paul Buchheit who was integral in the building of a little service known as Gmail.
Messaging
Speaking of Gmail, that is pure speculation, but what whether once the New Feed has been updated, whether Facebook decides to use Buchheit and co.’s services to build a better messaging system? MySpace just completely revamped their system, and Facebook’s is pretty poor.
Of course, one could plus argue that with a killer social stream, it may just negate the need for a revamping of the e mail system. After all, FriendFeed does messaging very well right now with its combination of public and private comments and posting.
Filtering
One aspect that is small but hugely vital for the social stream, is filtering. Facebook had been getting better at it with various groups you could place contact into to sort your stream, but FriendFeed was again, much better.
Here’s a perfect example. When one of your contacts on Facebook posts and item that you don’t care to see, you have the option to hide it. But whether they’re constantly posting the same type of item, you can only either hide them each date, or hide that entire user. With FriendFeed there were several more options, including hiding elements from just a positive source, as well as automatically unhiding items whether a friend had “liked” it.
I could go on, let’s just
And Twitter? Yeah, they badly need filters, pronto.
The Open Debate
But today’s acquisition plus extends beyond that of Facebook’s services. A lot of current FriendFeed users are expressing displeasure with the move considering they saw FriendFeed as a true bastion of hope for an open social stream versus Facebook’s closed method. While Facebook’s Chris Cox is saying the right things today about Facebook’s desire to be open, and there has been some progress, the process has been really slow. And plenty wonder whether Facebook really wants to be open at all.
The same society additionally see Twitter as more open, but still relatively closed use of the social stream, considering its APIs are limited. FriendFeed, which recently launched a new version of its own APIs had the respect of the developer community for their openness, whether nothing else. Now, a lot of users are upset at the prospects of a very open service being lured behind a wall.
The Twitter Paradox
Something else that is interesting in all of that is just how reliant FriendFeed has been on Twitter as a source of its details. We saw that first hand the other day when Twitter went down (and cut off its APIs) due to the DDoS attacks. FriendFeed was much, much quieter without the importing of tweets.
Facebook has applications that allow you to import your tweets to update your status as well, but as we’ve seen, neither side seems to particularly care when those applications just stop working for weeks, or break.
The FriendFeed team clearly saw the value of Twitter in their ecosystem, but with Facebook, it’s wouldn’t be surprising whether the emphasis will be less on Twitter, and more on Facebook’s own status updates. But whether Facebook is smart, they may let FriendFeed do to its News Feed precisely what it did to the FriendFeed stream, which is open it up to all those Twitter updates.
The reason is that while Twitter itself remains critical in that scenario, it’s possible that with Facebook’s 250 million plus users, a lot of the conversation (meaning comments) will start to take place on Facebook (just as it did on FriendFeed). that will slowly devalue Twitter by day as users realized they can have these conversations and cut out the middle man. that happened to a smaller extent when FriendFeed added the ability to post your own messages right to FriendFeed.
The Big Picture
This acquisition is a very smart move by Facebook to bolster its product, particularly as it relates to the real-time web. One thing it does not do however, is build Facebook simpler. I’d still argue that Twitter has an inherent advantage by Facebook considering it is so much simpler to use, resulting in a much lower barrier to entry. But naturally, with the complication comes a lot more details, and documents is ultimately be the key for a larger battle for the web, so it’s a trade-off.
Where that leaves FriendFeed as a service is still up in the air. The team has said FriendFeed will continue to run as-is for the date being, but made no promises about the future. Cox’s comments seem to indicate that FriendFeed will be a sort of farm system for the big league Facebook, which I’m certain will piss off plenty of FriendFeed devotees.
Eventually, one way or another, it’s hard to see FriendFeed as it stands now, continuing on. Facebook will start to take up too much of the FriendFeeders’ day, and it will languish. It’s sad, but that’s the web. Not every service can flourish. There simply aren’t sufficient users with abundant date to use all of them.
So that move was plus smart in a long-term sense by FriendFeed considering it ensure the awesome technology it has fostered with FriendFeed will continue on, and could one day reach a billion folks.
One thing is for undoubtful, the Facebook/Twitter battle just got a lot more interesting. And those are always fun to watch.
[photo: flickr/conerwithonan]
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