Facebook acquires Friendfeed.

Facebook, the insanely popular Social Network, has acquired Friendfeed, the increasingly powerful Social network aggregator. The financial terms aren’t being discussed but Facebook’s primary gain here is talent over product. The Friendfeed team of ex-Googlers like Paul Buchheit (creator of Gmail) and Bret Taylor will take up lead engineering roles at Facebook.

My initial and unexplored thoughts on this:

1. Facebook just became the biggest and most popular aggregator of all Social Media Networks. They now own the social space, even moreso than before.
2. Twitter will be worried. I believe this is the first nail in the coffin.
3. Google will look to acquire Facebook, and Facebook will do everything it can to avoid acquision.
4. FriendFeed’s (geeky) userbase won’t be happy. This will give rise to an OpenSource, federated alternative, not unlike Laconica (and by extension, Identica). In fact, Laconica might be the perfect staging ground for this project.
5. For the most part, Facebook’s userbase either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. They’ll rise up against the inevitable Home Page changes that this will eventually bring, and then quickly learn to deal with them.
6. Facebook care much more about their platform than the current services they offer. That’s why they purchase new talent and ideas in the form of Parakey (2007) and FriendFeed. Expect interesting cross-social-platform integrations over the next 12 months.

Here’s my prediction as we move into the era of the Realtime Web. The next major web war will be waged between Google Wave and FaceFriendBookFeed.