Welcome back.

In the age of real-time, the fact that Facebook is acquiring Friendfeed is already old news (and the story just broke about a half hour ago).

The terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, and the press release is fairly sketchy on details, but long on ecstatic quotes from the founders of both companies:

“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-founder. 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.”

“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.”

It only took moments for the skepticism to set in from Friendfeed’s core users.

Remember, guys, Facebook is famous for being a walled garden. How do you really expect them to treat FriendFeed? –Akiva Moskovitz

I always was for the boys getting paid...just..*sob* not like this! –Josh Haley

The entrepreneur in me says congrats, the geek/technologist in me is worried sick. I've never been as ADDICTED to a single site/service/socnet like FF since I started computing back in the early 80s. I dislike Facebook for a number of reasons and it sickens me to think of FF features being reincarnated in Facebook, but this is the reality that we now must contend with. –Brian Daniel Eisenberg

Funny while I interviewed Facebook and FriendFeed I was standing in front of the Alamo in Texas. Not sure that is a good metaphor. –Robert Scoble

Congrats to Paul, Bret, and the whole FriendFeed gang. But I hope you bring a big shot of openness into the Facebook ecosystem, because it doesn't feel that way right now. –Matt Cutts

What Does This Really Mean for Friendfeed Users?

Friendfeed user enthusiasm has long since peaked for the service, and as Akiva said elsewhere in his commentary on the purchase, this seems like just another nail in the coffin for Friendfeed as it is.

Most of the gang here at SiliconANGLE has chimed in on the topic over at /SABackchan, as well.

“Hey, since we’ve copied almost every innovation you’ve had,” snarked Sean P. Aune, “guess you might as well play on the company softball team!”

Sean’s kidding, to a certain extent, but he has a great point.  Facebook has used Friendfeed as a progenitor for what it’s public timeline has become.

“Friendfeed, despite user disenchantment today, has built a great product,” said John Furrier. “This is a great integration opportunity and certainly validation. Now imagine the amount of data that will be available from the Facebook environment.”

One possible future I can see for Friendfeed is it’s continued existence, untouched by Facebook proper (aside from possible integration with that Facebook Friend Connect service).  Facebook has been well-served by Friendfeed’s continued existence thus far by simply watching what works there, and then recreating those features within Facebook itself.

Certainly, Facebook has had much bigger problems in the press and with their users integrating wildly different changes in the service (remember Project Beacon?). Friendfeed has has similar issues, but not to the extent of Facebook.  Can you imagine the backlash if Friendfeed was suddenly integrated into Facebook proper?

My guess is that the team and site will remain intact as is, to be utilized as the R&D team for Facebook’s real-time strategy.

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