Facebook's FriendFeed coup

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: August 16, 2009 4:18:34 AM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Facebook's FriendFeed coup

[Note:  This item comes from friend Janos Gereben.  DLH]

From: janosG <janosg () gmail com>
Date: August 15, 2009 10:48:16 PM PDT
Subject: Facebook's FriendFeed coup

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/15/AR2009081500040_pf.html 
>

Facebook Cornering Market on E-Friends
Fight to Own Social Media Heats Up

The Washington Post
By Chadwick Matlin
Sunday, August 16, 2009

Facebook just bought the rights to nearly everything you do online.  
And it cost them only $47.5 million.

Facebook's purchase of FriendFeed, an obscure social-media platform,  
is potentially momentous. To understand why, we must understand  
FriendFeed, a start-up that is ubiquitous among techies and unknown to  
everybody else. It's a sleek application that acts as a clearinghouse  
for all of your social-media activities. Post something to Flickr?  
That will show up on your FriendFeed page. Digg something? FriendFeed  
will know. Post to Twitter from your phone? FriendFeed will syndicate  
your tweets. Once you initially tell it where to look, it will collect  
everything and tell it to the world.

The goal is to make automatic that which is all too annoying to do  
manually. If I like an article enough to Digg it, why should I then  
have to tell all my friends via Facebook or Twitter, as well? The  
social-media landscape has become disparate enough -- so many start- 
ups controlling so many different pieces of our lives -- that we need  
a central place that will organize all of our actions for us. That  
place is FriendFeed.

Facebook has recently shown that it, too, wants to be that place. For  
all of its genius in harnessing the collective procrastination of an  
entire planet, Facebook has usually asked you to come to it. For  
example, want to post photos on Flickr but not Facebook? Good luck  
telling your Facebook friends about it. In the past, while Facebook  
was building an audience, this walled garden helped it build its  
audience. If all your friends were on Facebook, then why not post your  
pictures there? After all, the point of digital photography in 2009 is  
to relive memories with the very group of people that lived through  
them in the first place. That group is most likely found on Facebook.

But now Facebook's user base is big enough for it to start looking  
out. There's a Twitter application that synchronizes your tweets with  
your Facebook status message. And then there's Facebook Connect, the  
company's convoluted and potentially brilliant attempt to make  
Facebook the official login for the rest of the Internet. Sites that  
support Facebook Connect -- about 15,000 and growing -- let users log  
in using their Facebook credentials in order to do things such as  
leave comments on articles and blog posts. That activity is then  
pumped back into the author's Facebook profile, which then promotes  
the site where the comment was left. Everybody wins -- especially  
Facebook, which gets more content and more of an off-site footprint.

So here's a theory: FriendFeed is going to become the companion to  
Facebook Connect; Facebook Connect pipes Facebook out to other sites,  
while FriendFeed's technology pipes other sites in. <snip>
..
That leaves two mega-conglomerates that will compete to be the portal  
of everything we do on the Internet. Google has long tried to get into  
the social game, and Facebook surely wouldn't mind expanding into some  
of Google's territory. (Real-time search is the likely entry point.)  
It's as classic an American struggle as Pepsi vs. Coke. Two companies,  
one market. Regardless of which side you choose, I'm sure Facebook  
will be happy to air your thoughts on the matter. Even if you write  
them on Blogspot, Google's blogging network. After all, that's why  
Facebook bought FriendFeed. So it could own you.
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