FriendFeed Acquired by Facebook – Now what?
Yesterday FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook for around $50 million. Having only spent time on FriendFeed on a regular basis for the last few weeks, it’s been interesting to see the general reaction of its followers.
A seemingly vast majority is quite upset about the move, whether it be their concern about the future of FriendFeed within the Facebook business, Facebook’s often non-user friendly terms of service, or the general breakup of a community they have grown to love.
Once true evangelists for the social network, the Scoble brothers, Robert and Alex, both took the news rather hard, one seemingly turning his back before rallying the troops, the other clearly displaying his distaste of the event.
I love that Bret, Paul, and Kevin checked in. They probably are looking at their screens and asking “what do we do now?” how about ship some new features before Facebook overlords take you off to do bigger things? – Robert Scoble from iPhone
I’m going to start a business where I charge people money to have me kick other people in the crotch…and when they look at me and say “WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE?” I’m going to look at them straight in the eye and say “it’s just business.” – Alex Scoble from FriendFeed
On the flip side you can see a lot of support, well wishes, and positive outlook for the future and the effect that the FriendFeed team can have on the ever-growing Facebook community.
Facebook shows its leadership. Combining public and private facing services is a big win. Facefeed is a winner. – Leo Laporte from Twitter
Without a doubt the future is still uncertain and discussions are abound about what will happen to FriendFeed and the community that has spent so much of their online lives there. Calls for moving on to other services have already begun and perhaps it’s just a matter of time.
I will write more about this another day as well as the impact and lessons this appears to have taught many about how and where they are disseminating their data.
As a quick follow-up, I’m writing this in Qumana, a free multi-platform blog editor. Not bad so far but I think I’ll stick to WordPress’ interface.