Today’s big announcement was that Friendfeed was purchased by Facebook. Friendfeed is a great feed aggregation service. Friendfeed allows it’s users to import other feeds from various social media sites into it. This can include everything from YouTube, Facebook,Twitter and even your own blog. It should be noted that this is one of the things I like about the service.
So far I have not read any financial terms on other web sites on what the deal cost Facebook or what the terms of the deal were.
This deal was bound to happen and many more of them will happen before it is out. Companies in the business world constantly go through mergers as they try and increase their market share or increase the types of products they carry. Tech companies are not exempt from acquisitions. In my opinion their are way too many players in the social media game and as a result some mergers/buy outs need to happen to streamline the industry.
Why did Facebook choose Friendfeed. Their are several reasons this happened the biggest I believe is Friendfeed’s technology. Friendfeed has aggregation technology built into it. This is the most powerful part of it’s entire offering and one of the one’s I like most.
The second reason I believe this acquisition happened is because of similarities between the two services. Facebook recently has added features like adding a “like” option to posts and changing the way comments to posts are displayed. If you did not realize you were on FaceBook you would think that you were using Friendfeed.
The third big reason I believe for the sale of Friendfeed is Friendfeed has not made the mainstream. It is mostly a hang out for the geek crowd. This is actually the part I will miss most because it has kept away all the advertisers. It will no longer be a safe refuge from all of the constant badgering to buy stuff.
The forth reason I believe this happened is to get a jump of Google. Google is eventually going to have Wave go live and this will be a major social media offering. Google already has Blogger, YouTube and it’s own Google Profiles. I do believe it is a matter of time before Google scoops up Twitter so Facebook had to move now to stay competitive.
Today’s buyout is the first of many in the social media arena that I believe will happen within the next year. I do believe Facebook had to make this purchase to get a jump on it’s competition. Only time will tell if the purchase pays off in the long run.
