Facebook buys site to bolster real-time search
Facebook has bought content-sharing start up FriendFeed as part of its bid to extend its lead over social media rivals such as MySpace and Twitter.
FriendFeed was founded in 2007 by four former Google employees. It has more than one million users and acts as a one stop shop for people to access other sites such as YouTube, Digg, Blogger and Facebook.
Users can share content and links with others in real time to broadcast on other sites. Facebook and Twitter have already been quick to copy some of the start up’s real time search capabilities.
The acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, will see FriendFeed’s team of engineers join Facebook – enabling it to take advantage of their experience in the field of search.
Currently, FriendFeed is expected to continue to operate as a standalone brand.
It was previously thought that Google and Twitter had also considered snapping up the content-sharing site.
The company’s co-founders Paul Buchheit, Bret Taylor, Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh, were instrumental in the development of Gmail and Google’s Adsense products.
Meanwhile, Facebook revealed this week that the vast majority of the largest advertisers in the US are using Facebook to market themselves http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/majority-of-big-us-advertisers-use-facebook/3003251.article
The social networking site says 83 of the top 100 marketing spenders in the US use the site including firms such as Johnson & Johnson and Nike.
