FriendBook? FaceFeed? Facebook Aquires FriendFeed

In a surprise announcement to many FriendFeed users, Facebook has aquired FriendFeed. Many FF users are absolutely devastated. FriendFeed provided somewhat of a middle-ground between Twitter’s absolute bare-bones status updates and Facebook’s full-on walled-garden social network. While most Facebook users will be completely indifferent to this announcement, FriendFeed users  have mixed feelings. Ex-Googlers Paul Bucheit, Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, and Sanjeev Singh have not only created an awesome service, but have actually engaged with the community. They participated in what they had created and actually listened to user feedback. Even though most of FriendFeed’s users are upset about the purchase, they are happy that the team is moving on up.

Bret Taylor calls the aquisition a structured investment vehicle in his announcement on the FriendFeed blog. The FriendFeed team is excited and say they have been admirers of Facebook since they share a common vision. I’d flip that statement around and say that Facebook must be huge admirers of FriendFeed with all the swagger jacking they’ve been doing. Likes and realtime updating are two staples of the FriendFeed experience that Facebook recently took as their own.

FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team. As usual, we will communicate openly about our plans as they develop — keep an eye on the FriendFeed News group for updates.

In an interview with Robert Scoble, Paul Bucheit admits that he was wary of the deal for a while. He knew how the community felt about Facebook and probably foresaw the backlash that would occur. In the end, he says that this move is actually the best for both companies and their users. I hope he is right.

How do you feel about this aquisition? Will FriendFeed be completely consumed by Facebook? Sound off in the comments.

Facebook Agrees to Acquire Sharing Service FriendFeed

PALO ALTO, Calif. — August 10, 2009 — 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.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.