Tag Archives | FriendFeed

FriendFeed Is Not Going Anywhere, Says Co-Founder

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 21, 2010 at 3:28 pm

VentureBeat’s Anthony Ha reports from the Facebook f8 developer conference that FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor is in attendance, and says that the site will not be shutting down. Facebook acquired the site in August of last year, and FriendFeed developers were re-tasked to responsibilities within Facebook. Taylor now works as Director of Product for the social networking giant.

Taylor confirmed that Facebook still has no plans to develop anything for the service, however as of yet it still remains alive and well. “For all two of you out there, thank you, FriendFeed users,” he joked.

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Facebook Snaps Up FriendFeed

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 10, 2009 at 2:45 pm

FriendbookFacebook, the planet’s largest social-networking site, is buying one that’s relatively small but extremely influential, FriendFeed. The deal involves FriendFeed living on as a standalone site for now, but it sounds like the long-term idea is to build new FriendFeed-like features and technologies into Facebook itself. It’s clearly a major move in Facebook’s chess game with Twitter, and presumably reduces (but doesn’t eliminate) the possibility of Facebook buying Twitter itself at some point.

Reaction among serious FriendFeed fans to the news seems to be largely guarded-to-negative (although FriendDeed überenthusiast Robert Scoble is guardedly optimistic, and here’s Louis Gray’s thoughtful take). Me, I’m basically a FriendFeed dabbler/lurker at best, and I’m keeping my mind open. FriendFeed is impressive in many ways, but it’s complex enough that it’s remained kind of a secret weapon of serious geeks. If there’s one thing Facebook has done well, it’s figured out how to make a complicated (confusing, even) service appealing to millions of people of all sorts. Maybe it’ll be able to work some magic with the FriendFeed team that’ll make all of this makes sense.

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