Facebook ha comprado FriendFeed. Aún no hay detalles, no es claro el precio, las condiciones o cuánto tiempo tienen negociándolo. Lo están reportando algunos sitios especializados en emprendimientos online como TechCrunch.
Lo primero que se me viene a la mente es que FriendFeed es un segundón, recordemos que meses atrás Facebook quiso adueñarse de la gran conversación en tiempo real que representa Twitter y no lo lograron; FriendFeed también tiene ese elemento de inmediatez pero es más un agregador de otros servicios aunque también permite conversación y en algunos círculos sucede bastante, por ejemplo con la comunidad alrededor de personas populares como Loic Le Meur o Robert Scoble.
Actualización: Facebook ha publicado un comunicado de prensa que reproducimos de forma íntegra:
PALO ALTO, CALIF.—August 10, 2009—Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.
"Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends," said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. "We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world."
"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."
Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.
"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."
FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.
Actualización 2: FriendFeed también ha publicado algo al respecto por medio de un post en su blog:
We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle...
The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team. We've always been great admirers of Facebook, and our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we've developed at FriendFeed to Facebook's 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook's passionate engineers to create even more ways for you to easily share with your friends online.