With so many people now seemingly friendfeeding from within facebook or greader, I've decided to go against the flow. This room/group/thingie has been private and quietly absorbing most of my incoming google reader stream. Now it's going public: http://friendfeed.com/slippyr...
I was thinking the same thing. Count how many times you said "Cool" Robert ;)
- Andru Edwards
This acquisition is most likely going to suck for users, but congrats to the FF team. Once Google announced Wave, selling to Facebook was probably the only remaining exit strategy worth the money.
- Chip Ramsey
I don't know if i'm excited by the possiblities of this move, or frightened by what this could mean.
- John Czwartacki
I hope they don't spoil it for us. I just want to keep coming to Friendfeed.com
- Mark
If they had no plans of shutting down FriendFeed and rolling features into Facebook they would have said so right away to avoid speculation and to reassure FF users. I am trying not to be suspicious, but I am.
- Inside Alaska
Andru: it was about 100 degrees outside where I was doing the interview. I was trying to think cool and keep my cool. Heheh.
- Robert Scoble
Maybe now we'll be able to integrate Facebook feed with FF & twitter
- Justin Long
Faceborg...Googlebook...time to move back to StumbleUpon? Guess we should have seen this coming when FriendFeed got integrated into FeedBurner.
- Internet Strategist
This interview is pretty funny... the person interviewing sounds like he just wants to ask questions for the sake of asking questions...;-) ... thanks for the insightful interview but..
- Sherif Mansour
In the interview, it was said that FriendFeed was not in immediate danger and could have continued for a number of years on their own. I'm not quite sure if that is true, because FriendFeed didn't develop their own business model.
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
About integrating the social graphs, my social networks on FF and FB had different purposes. I don't have any friends on FB whom I haven't personally met, whereas I subscribe to some people I don't know on FF just because their feeds are interesting. On a related note, the FB graph is undirected and the FF graph is directed.
- Ruchira S. Datta
@Scobleizer interviews Paul Buchheit, cofounder of FriendFeed RE acquisition by Facebook.
- Deano @ Byron New Media
"tremendous opportunity" is so vague. Opportunity for who? What opportunity exactly? Or is it just the opportunity to allow the friendfeed employees who weren't already rich to get rich?
- Laura Norvig
Laura: it's every engineer's dream to change the world of 300 million people instead of a few hundred thousand people. That's why this is a tremendous opportunity.
- Robert Scoble
Sigh. I guess. It's just very hard to think of Facebook as a life-changing venue.
- Laura Norvig
Robert: Thanks for this - some information at last!
- Jim Connolly
Wow. I just realized I'm subscribed to 349 people on Friendfeed. Now I have the somewhat agonizing task of deciding of whom add as a friend. I follow a lot of y'all because of the interesting things you say and/or post. Hmmmm. Is it better to ask who would like me to Friend them on FB? I'm trying to not be too knee-jerky about the FB purchase. (facebook.com/curtisalanjackson)
- CAJ, somewhere else
hope it doesn't mess w/ twitter integration
- Ken Seto
Just because Facebook bought Friendfeed, doesn't necessarily mean they will do anything with the service. At least maybe not right away. People need to chill out.
- Alex Knight
makes a lot of sense - f.b. now has a power house of real-time all-stars. fixes many of the feature 'wish' lists for f.b. - actually a major positive sign for innovation. congrats to the F.F. team.
- michael sean wright
This will probably be bad. like all purchases, it will be an "afterthought" and never be fully allowed to develop and flourish.
- Ryan Jones
Man this is really SUCKS!! :((( we all know Facebook strategies on the web :(( Whey will drive FriendFeed to the helll and I'm pretty sure of this :((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( BAD SUCKS SAD :(((
- FFTornado
It almost seemed inevitable since Facebook has been copying so much of Friendfeed in recent months. It's good for the founders of FF and may benefit those of us who use both on a regular basis. Maybe they'll just leave FF alone?
- Kenley Neufeld
Funny thing is, if you posted about this on Facebook, 99.9999% of it's users would go "huh, what's FriendFeed anyway?"
- Richard Matthias
someone tell me what they will do with it? Nothing maybe? Kill it, maybe?
- Francine Hardaway
Wonder how they'll integrate, separate services with more interaction or FF swallowed by Facebook.
- Steven Cains
Buy as is use it's IP and close it down or run as separate business? Either way, didn't see that coming.
- Keith Bennett
from BuddyFeed
It was bound to go down. Like we used to say on the block shootin' dice "Big Bank Take Little Bank"
- professor daddyo
I do, however, wish tha tmore sites would implement this commenting engine.
- Ryan Jones
Fotis: haha, wait too long, and you'll never be able to close your FF account ;)
- Jason Hargrove
not believing it until another source confirms...
- Benton
Congrats to the friendfeed team. Worried about the future though.
- Andy Roth
It looks like a defensive move. I think it's better fro FB to acquire FF than incorporating twitter functionalities in their status feature.
- Pablo Paniagua
Congrats to ff team...but how does this work? I have 2 different accounts...and I like it that way...I don't want to share/spam my friends on facebook with what I have here...
- brainno722 (Peter)
Originally posted this to your other FF/FB post before you astarted this one: I don't see the point of Facebook acquiring FriendFeed. They are pretty much identical services (well, FF represents just the News Feed portion of Facebook) I don't see how they can incorporate FriendFeed into Facebook. If they really did buy it, then I see this as them going for programming talent more so...
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- Christopher A. Wichura
Bad bad bad bad bad bad ::runs screaming down the hall::
- Kandeezie
from fftogo
I think this is more of a "send the friendfeed traffic to facebook" than any kind of technical leverage. My biggest concern here: in order to exchange dialogue with people on facebook I need to be friends with them vs. being able to do it on friendfeed without having to friend them up. I find this valuable as there may be a topic or 5 that I want to engage with user "X" on, but I don't...
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- Erik Boles
I am disappointed by this news... I don't like Facebook at all... And I'm afraid they will just kill FriendFeed with their awful cluttered interface...
- Lindsay
It depends on how they integrate it. Did they buy it for the search engine, or did they buy it as a potential for extending the reach of Facebook into real time conversations? It's all about the life stream now right? So probably Facebook's attempt to stake a claim there.
- Tony "Frosty" Welch
First of all, I love the name "Facefeed." ROFL Second, this is business boys. Happens all the time. Why do you think innovation keeps happening. FB will integrate or kill off FF, and something else will happen. It's a natural cycle.
- Francine Hardaway
wondering if i should continue aggregating all my online activity in frienfeed now that facebook owns it!!
- Gtp19
I can't begin to process this right now. Too much work to focus on. Later when I read this 10,000 mile long thread and have a glass of Cab in hand.
- Michele Lorito-Chase
Not feeling real good about this, hope fully Facebook will do right by the FF community, but I'm not holding my breath. Glad for the FF team though
- Kim Landwehr
if you look closely at FF the large majority of FF posts are twitter posts, so there was not that much original content on FF in the first place...
- Ingmar
So FB failed to buy Twitter, - so they buy FF which is just a UI for twitter..
- Nick Halstead
Makes a lot of sense for Facebook. And we find this very healthy ^^
- twitscoop
People need to stop freaking out. The Facebook/Friendfeed buy out was just announced. Wait for details people.
- Alex Knight
It could be bad, it could be good. As long as Facebook doesn't try to port their functionality over, I'm fine with it being a financial acquisition.
- Adam Reyher
Great, why did I bother creating an account here? I could have held out.
- desinole
if this is true, for the love of god, please don't Facebook go and mess up FriendFeed as they have their own system, Facebook is a mess these days, Friendfeed is one of the 2.0 sites that actually has concentrated on doing a few things well, complete opposite to Facebook.
- Carl Grint
I suppose Friendfeed was considerably lacking in LOLcats.
- Ian Tindale
Cuz we all know that facebook doesn't respect user's privacy and you've got basically everything on ff, youtube, twitter, digg whatever you do
- Fotis Alexandrou
Smart for Facebook but I prefer Friendfeed the way it is.What, we'll be throwing rabbits next?
- Janet Fouts
FriendFeed listens to the community. Facebook doesn't. Not to mention they're ENTIRELY different communities.
- Adam Reyher
If they keep FriendFeed as a separate site, and still upgrade regularly, this is fine. If FriendFeed winds up in the dead pool, then it sucks.
- Steve Sill
Maybe I should rediscover my Orkut account.
- Ian Tindale
I was just thinking how Friendfeed had stayed out of recent takeovers, mergers and hence cyber attacks. Will Friendfeed now be taken over by celebs and spammers too?
- Nils Geylen
Not sure why this news makes me nervous. Please tell me it's going to be ok Scoble...
- Lucas
FF has been FB's incubator for awhile.
- Peter Warnock
How can I spam on this thread please ? Any idea ?
- Toucouleur
Facebook has ZERO respect for users' wishes... Friendfeed is incompatible with that. Friendfeed will be going away. :( Their blog post says as much: "FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally **for the time being**. We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product"
- tollie williams
FriendFeed functionality on Facebook would be nice. The reverse, not so much. They're trying to address two entirely separate purposes and as such, need to remain completely separate.
- Adam Reyher
Stay here until FB does something dumb with FF
- Ryan
The rhetoric seems a bit too "Facebook will do what they want with us" and not "we will remain FF and continue forward". Seems as if FB went for the tech and we could lose FF as a seperate entity. Boo.
- Derek Shanahan
confirmed by facebook press release.
- Zac Bowling
Love 'em or hate 'em....Facebook made a phenomenal purchase.
- Kevin Pruett
I see a ton of Wall Spam. Facebook users just don't get it when you port your twitter updates over. There is too much for them to wrap their heads around. This will be a hard transition.
- Ryan Cummins
And I was REALLY getting fond of FriendFeed. From now on only downhill applicationwise?
- Bart
Not happy about this. I use Facebook, but don't like it. It reminds me of AOL from 10 years ago.
- David Sharpe
I agree that I don't want FB to mess up FF, but this will also give FF a higher profile and bring in many more users...which we may or may not like, judging by what happened on Twitter. I hope FF doesn't die off like Jaiku because I really think FF offers a more valuable and useful interface.
- Cathryn Hrudicka
One thing to consider is this: If we have "trusted" the FriendFeed people not to screw things up, hopefully we can trust them to make sure they're still in control in the terms of the acquisition.
- Adam Reyher
What's it going to be called? Failbook?
- Ian Tindale
I hope this is a joke.. Damn it, I dont like Facebook now there is nowhere to go... F***
- Jacque
I am trying to imagine how this will be a good thing for existing FF users. It feels so right and so wrong all at once!...Maybe at least my kids and wife will finally get what I've been ignoring them for over the past year.
- Thom Kennon
Is that means we're going to see more extremist groups around, now that FB has acquired FF?
- Nir Ben Yona
so where do all the cool kids go now? we need another startup, stat!
- h1ro
I am afraid... what johnny2009 have said can really be the future... soon friendfeed will = Jaiku
- Ahmed Mubbashir Khan
Damn,I've just"got friendfeed,and i love it.I definately don't like facebook.What does it mean for twitter?
- Paul Downing
Any investors want to predict the buyout price?
- Kevin Pruett
am gonna wait for google wave... coz in facebook, i cant access the complete stream for a month ago, the site goes down very often while browsing, and privacy issues galore!! congratulations for friendfeed but its jus me!!!
- Gtp19
Maybe we´re seeing here one of FriendFeeds biggest discusions ever. I´m sceptic about the future of FF as a standlone service...
- Torsten Eckert
What concerns me most is what happens to my friends here (and that I have to interact with my friends THERE). Will we have to be friends to interact in the same way we have the last couple of years?
- jcunwired
This is very good for FriendFeed as long as Facebook doesn't corrupt them. I would have preferred to see Google buy FF but I know with their focus on Wave I don't think it would have been a good fit. I like the Facebook platform, but they have done too many shady things in the past for me to trust them.
- Adam Teece
all of the conversation is happening on FriendFeed and Twitter - nothing on Facebook. Think we'd scare away Facebook if everyone starts having lots of conversations there - like on Scoble's fan page?
- Stuart Miniman
They can or don't have to fix FF's FB app now.
- ydfeed
All I can think of is now a lot of people can feel the pain the dedicated Pownce community felt, but at least you're not getting shut down, just yet.
- Mike Lewis
I'm not a big facebook user, but my gut feeling is that like twitter buying summize, it will mark the end of major innovations. I hope I'm wrong. But they should totally go with the facefeed mashup name.
- motownmutt
I dont see any potential for competition with twitter FB and Twitter serve different purposes as does FriendFeed
- iluvblackwomen
Sorry but renaming Facebook to 'Facefeed' is utterly stupid.
- Alex Knight
does making google reader more social has anything to do with this buyout??!
- Gtp19
yeah this was good for facebook. bad for anyone who liked friendfeed.
- Liz
FriendFeed is very good, a better way to use Twitter & etc. Knowing this, I still rarely use FF. Not going to start using Facebook more.
- Nicole
Actually, this could be death for Twitter when you think about it. The people I know who are in FB are not likely to add TWO more nets to their lifestream. FriendFeed makes more sense for them. Maybe Twitter just stays as the dumb pipe it's become for many of us here.
- Thom Kennon
Echoing what others have said - My guess: Facebook will get better, Friendfeed will get worse, Twitter will matter a lot less.
- Matthew Blaisdell
Good for FB UI and search, questionable for the FF community and its independent spirit ...
- Bo Stern
The main reason why I came to FF was because when I tried to treat FB the same as FF, i was talking to a wall. At least people interact here. At FB, it's all about the cheesy games/apps.
- Matthew Horton
from iPhone
Just like most acquisitions, it could be good and it could be bad. I trust that FriendFeed will live on as FriendFeed, only sharing their tech with Facebook. Possibly more integration between the two sites. If you were FF/FB, what would you do?
- Nick Humphries
Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook are three entirely different animals. Facebook eats Friendfeed and poops out little bits of content that once belonged to us. Twitter continues to thrive as the broadcast conversation-wannabe that it always was.
- jcunwired
Nick - think again. Its going to go away - read the tea leaves in this statement: "Your data will not go away any time in the near term future - we are committed to our users" - Bret Taylor in this post https://friendfeed.com/friendf...
- jcunwired
Facebook must want real time soc-net search badly...
- martin smith
The biggest thing here, at least within the Twitter context, is that this merger will combine 'verified' identity (in terms of Facebook user ID being slightly more 'real' than Twitter) with real time status updates.
- Dan Patterson
I'm looking forward to what this brings to Facebook. I have enjoyed both networks but wondered when FriendFeed/Facebook would face-off and/or be absorbed by the other. I think FriendFeed's tech will improve the Facebook experience.
- Jacob Sloan
FriendFeed + Twitter = disruptive. FriendFeed + Facebook = one more app for FB . Facebookers dont know the power of FriendFeed. I agree with : "" So FB failed to buy Twitter, - so they buy FF which is just a UI for twitter.. - Nick Halstead ""
- Rocky
Most likely scenario is Facebook assimilates the FriendFeed guys, has them work on improving Facebook newsfeed/realtime/status, and lets FriendFeed die a slow unmaintained death.
- Richard Akerman
Well, my friends on FB doesn't give a damn about sharing links, news, pics, vids etc. So I'm not sure how I will use FB+FF now. I don't think FriendFeed will exist, just implemented in Facebook. The name FriendFeed will die. And: on FB you don't want the whole world to see everything you're doing, just your friends. And it will stay this way. So the question is: Who will build the new FriendFeed?
- Patrik Johansson
Do this mean, by the way, that we (the FriendFeed users) should start to connect with each other on FB? How will they like that? People who get's 2-3 maybe 4000 connections?
- Patrik Johansson
Robert, it means all the time you invested building friends lists and updates there will go to Facebook :-)
- Loic Le Meur
could someone start to develop a Frienfeed clon , please ? ASAP !
- Rocky
Seems bloody terrible from this users perspective. Good for Friendfeed the company though.
- Quasar
Given Facebook's past, this could be really bad. Given FriendFeed's past, this could be really good. No real way to speculate without talking to the FF crew.
- xero
+3273 Quasar! (one for each of my Likes, already on a death march)
- jcunwired
Robert, do you know if Facebook is going to put on limits here at FF??? Oh crikey... so much for our citizen journalism here.... Admittedly I am bummed. Uber bummed.
- Arleen Anderson
your blog is the most important thing you can own on the web. these sites can come and go. it's a great social point but true friends you've made here you talk outside of ff, right?
- Terry O'Fee
from BuddyFeed
It's a good time to sell to Facebook, cause Google Wave is imminent and is going to destroy all of Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed. I think FriendFeed employees might even go back to Google eventually as soon as their contracts with Facebook are up.
- Charbax
Robert - wow. just wow I am stunned. Sorta sad actually. I love FF innovation and don't want to see that stop !!!!!
- Susan Beebe
(RE: Your tweet earlier) When you say the minor league team going to the majors, I don't always feel that this is a positive thing. As in this case, it's like Ferrari being acquired by Ford. I don't think I like this acquisition.
- Richard Merritt
the free ride couldn't last forever. I know it sucks that things will change, but they've got a lot more sense than Twitter has about these things..
- Terry O'Fee
from BuddyFeed
You must all assimilate to the new FaceFeed
- Jonathan.Rivera
From what I'm gathering, this acquisition is more about FB acquiring the talented engineers of FF than it is about the FF software itself. A smart play by FB. Unfortunate for us that value FF. I personally feel that FB is just slowly becoming the new Myspace. Which I don't think I need to explain how lame that is.
- Richard Merritt
If you ignore all the crappy apps and just comment and post photos, your main feed on Facebook is fundamentally a pretty similar experience to FriendFeed - people post stuff, people comment on it. That is, at-least, the way my network tends to use Facebook. The main difference is that Facebook defaults to being very closed and private while FriendFeed defaults to being very open and...
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- Edward Coffey
edward - pretty much. it's FF for the layman. remember back in the day they used to have forums too?
- Terry O'Fee
friendfeed is very cliquey. you have your group of people who usually gather round for conversations. now imagine some of this friendfeed stuff in facebook. done right it will help them a lot.
- Terry O'Fee
from BuddyFeed
I don't think I am liking this but FB does need to add the "edit" feature like on here.
- Marika Dye
FF acquisition is expected. But, as a user, I would be bumned, if FF would become a feature of FB. As, I tend to use Twitter as my social network and not FB.
- Vasu Srinivasan
It doesn't make much sense talking about 'Facefeed" and 'Friendbook'... Facebook simply bought a cool 12-people company called Friendfeed for its great search technology paying 15M plus some shares, which is really very cheap in this context, given the value of FF's technology (as it is perceived by us). They are also hiring the talented FF team, which makes the deal even more interesting for FB. Probably there are also some deeper hidden motives and implications that I am not able to get.
- Liviu Barbat
I would love it if Facebook integrated the FriendFeed features. I would love it if Facebook had FriendFeed's flexibility with Facebook's privacy control. It sucks that the world may lose FriendFeed, but it is great the Facebook will likely get better.
- Andrew
Andrew, Facebook will get better - over time. There won't be any Vulcan website meld of FB and FF overnight.
- Bill Sodeman
thank god someone understands that, andrew. it's like "i liked this band better before they went to a major label!" ;)
- Terry O'Fee
Bill - But we can dream, can't we? :) I mean, what I love about Facebook is that I'm interacting with my friends as my friends, not as usernames and avatars. But I hate their bookmarklet, the weird delays when I post anything, the comment system, and I hate the Photo gallery tech. I love the FriendFeed community, but would love bringing the FriendFeed technology over to Facebook even more. If only Facebook could buy Flickr next...
- Andrew
as long as fb start thinking in creative commons terms... one day ..
- Terry O'Fee
they are both great services I think will be a good thing
- Logan Lindquist
oh NO! I don't spend much time at FB (everybody there's too busy playing stupid games, at least in my little network), and besides it's more private unlike FF. And now they've gone and bought FF? And I just joined! I guess I won't be around here for long, since FF won't...
- Dennis Jernberg
No mention of Yahoo. Totally irrelevant these days. Sad.
- Scott Schnaars
This deal makes sense! Now fb developers do not need to figure out how ff does it because they can just ask!
- Garin Kilpatrick
One of my facebook accounts got closed up. Into this account I fed my friendfeed. And into friendfeed I fed for example my socialmedian shares, diggs, stumbles etc.
- Wilhelm Bauer
Time for the next generation app. *Taps foot impatiently for Google Wave*
- Karen Masullo
I don't think it's about getting Friendfeed it's self; but having the developers and the information about real-time search.
- Chris Martin
Okay, I got a little bit excited about that, but I do. It almost smelled like fresh coconut on my walk home.
- joey
BTW - Akiva - you were right about that thing earlier. I was distracted by day job stuff while all the news was breaking. The pit in the bottom of my stomach is the nausea that is the result of how I feel about today's news.
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg
Honestly, I feel like I've been robbed of a best friend. FriendFeed was the best experience I've had on the Internet in over ten years.
- Akiva Moskovitz
The more I've thought about it, the more I agree Akiva. I feel gutted right now. I've never been more addicted to a site/service like this and watching what is happening right now makes me sick to my stomach. I tried starting a blog post, but I'm at a loss for words. Did you read Shawn Farner's blog post? It comes as close to describing where I'm at right now: http://friendfeed.com/shawnfa...
- Brian Daniel Eisenberg