Saltó la noticia del verano: según varios medios online especializados en empresas **la red social Facebook ha comprado el servicio más importante de lifestreaming, FriendFeed**.
Por el momento no se tiene ningún tipo de detalle sobre la operación, ni el precio pagado, condiciones o cuánto tiempo llevan ambas empresas en negociaciones. Lo que está claro es que Facebook no para, primero intentó comprar Twitter, cosa que no consiguió y ahora se lleva un servicio que por el momento no ha eclosionado pero que tiene un futuro bastante prometedor.
Otra cosa que está clara es el gran “equipo humano” que se llevan. FriendFeed lo capitanea un equipo completo de ex-googlers, quizás el más conocido Paul Buchheit, responsable de la creación de Gmail.
Actualizaremos este post según haya más información, probablemente Facebook o FriendFeed no tarden en lanzar comunicado oficial tras la filtración de la información a la red.
Actualización: Como decía, Facebook ha tardado minutos en publicar comunicado de prensa sobre la operación que reproduzco tal cual:
> 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 II: Los de FriendFeed también han publicado algo al respecto, estos de forma más escueta y en un post:
> 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.