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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Facebook Buys FriendFeed: A More Objective Look (with more links, too)

Two days ago, Facebook bought FriendFeed. I was far from the only one who was shocked; but I posted a harsh criticism in the opening to my first post on this subject. Then I followed it up with a whole bunch of relevant links. Having had two days to cool off, I'm now more able to look at it objectively. And, of course, the news is getting even more interesting.

Some of us FriendFeed users branched out to new services: in my case, these are Posterous, Streamy, and Amplifeeder (link is to the FriendFeed version rather than the ASP.NET version). There are those who believe that FriendFeed is already a dead letter. I am not one of them; I've already announced on FriendFeed that I'm sticking around for the long haul. But then, it just happens that I've got accounts with both FriendFeed and Facebook.

Most of us FriendFeed users are sticking with the service. It's not dead. Yet. The fate of Yahoo 360 (i.e., oblivion) may still be in its future, but for now it's still going strong, and both Facebook the FriendFeed founders intend to keep it going at least for the time being. Significantly, it's still being updated with new features.

Now for some of today's relevant articles (add your own in the comments):

News:
Ars Technica: Stream resistance is futile: Facebook assimilates FriendFeed
New York Daily News: So Facebook just bought FriendFeed... What is FriendFeed?
Entertainment Weekly: Facebook buys FriendFeed: Why this is a good thing
PC World: FriendFeed Buy Helps Facebook Compete With Google and Twitter
PC World: Facebook Buys FriendFeed: What Does It Mean?

Blogs:
Mark Krynsky: My Thoughts on the Current State of FriendFeed
Om Malik at GigaOm: Why Facebook Wants FriendFeed
Franklin Pettit: The Rise and Fall of FriendFeed
Louis Gray: Hi Facebook, It's Me, FriendFeed. This Relationship? It's Complicated.
Know The Network: It's Not About FriendFeed, It's About Friends — A Requiem
Alexander van Elsas: My 2 cts on Facebook buying FriendFeed
Jesse Stay: Facebook to FriendFeed: You Complete Me

My Links:
Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Posterous (note: yet another blog!), deviantART (currently neglected), Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader (note: nothing shared yet),
I may make these permanent links in the "My Sites" section of the sidebar.

I am not going to mention Facebook Lite, or the new Facebook messaging API intended to take on MySpace Mail as well as webmail, or whatever. These aren't relevant to this post.

But Facebook Lite aside, what will Facebook actually do to FriendFeed? Right now, we can only wait and see...