Facebook purchases FriendFeed

Content-sharing service Friendfeed has been bought by social networking website Facebook.

Tuesday, 11 August 2009


No financial details of the purchase have been disclosed, but the transaction is seen as a coup for the social media portal because of Friendfeed's ability to conduct real-time search.

Users of the service can see what their friends are doing online, as well as share various web-based content.

This is an area where Facebook has been looking to expand and comes a year after the portal failed in its attempt to buy micro-blogging website Twitter, which has gone from strength to strength over the last 12 months.

Bret Taylor, co-founder of FriendFeed, which employs 12 people in Silicon Valley, says: "Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends."

He adds that the team is looking forward to teaming up with social media phenomenon to bring the innovations it has developed to the millions of Facebook users around the world.

The deal comes a week after Facebook was one of the high-profile victims of a virus attack targeted at controversial Georgian blogger Cyxymu.

While Facebook encountered servicing problems, Twitter was also affected and ended up offline for around two hours.

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