ARN

Facebook may become social network hub with FriendFeed buy

Facebook agrees to acquire feed aggregator founded by ex-Google managers

Facebook may be looking to become a social networking hub with its move to acquire real-time feed aggregator FriendFeed.

Facebook announced this morning that it has agreed to buy FriendFeed for an undisclosed amount of money. FriendFeed's 12 employees will join Facebook's crew and its four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook's engineering and product teams, according to Facebook.

"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, in a statement. "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, founded by four former Google Inc. employees in October 2007, offers a service that acts as a social networking aggregator, consolidating updates and posts from Web sites, blogs and microblogs like Twitter.

"This is probably a smart move for Facebook, giving them ownership over a social network aggregator and allowing Facebook to make their site the overall hub for social networking," said Dan Olds, an analyst for The Gabriel Consulting Group. "Assuming that Facebook can establish itself as a social networking hub for its users, this offers Facebook several advantages. The first is that it will keep users on Facebook pages longer, which means greater exposure for Facebook advertisers and higher ad rates. The stickier Facebook can become for users, the more revenue they can make from their advertising."

Facebook, which is relying heavily on venture capital and little on earned income, isn't adverse to making big purchases.

Earlier this year, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone confirmed that Facebook had looked to buy his company last fall.

Nominations for the 2012 ARN IT Industry Awards open on Tuesday, June 12.

More about: etwork, Facebook, Google
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the ARN comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: Facebook, FriendFeed, mark zuckerberg
ARN Directory | Distributors relevant to this article
Aquion , Avnet Technology Solutions
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to ARN's news, research and invitation only events.
ARN Distributor Directory
Find distributors by name | vendor | location
Channel Deals
/deals/avg/2011-02-25_368_avg-wants-you
AVG (AU/NZ) Pty Ltd

AVG Wants You!

More details »
ARN Vendor Directory
Find vendors by name | category

iAsset is a channel management ecosystem that automates all major aspects of the entire sales,marketing and service process, including data tracking, integrated learning, knowledge management and product lifecycle management.