Facebook, the world’s largest social network, just bought FriendFeed for a rumored $50 million, said Tom Taulli in BloggingStocks. "Ultimately, this looks like a way to put pressure on Twitter,” which Facebook recently tried and failed to purchase. Like Twitter, FriendFeed is a social aggregator, letting you follow people’s thoughts on various topics in real time, on sites including Twitter and Facebook, but also on Flickr and some 55 others.
This may look like “an assault on Twitter,” said Douglas MacMillan in BusinessWeek. But the real target is Google and “the next great frontier on the Web: real-time search.” It’s no coincidence that FriendFeed’s 12 employees include superstar ex-Googlers who brought us Gmail and Google Maps. With FriendFeed’s far superior search engine, Facebook could actually siphon some business from Google, too.
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