Resistance is Futile: Facebook Buys FriendFeed

FriendFeed Updates Status: Married to Facebook - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

FriendFeed, a social media tracker, created in 2007 by a gang of ex-Googlers, has been acquired by Facebook for an undisclosed amount.

“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 chief executive, in a news release. “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 works like an RSS reader for social media content, pulling in and publishing feeds from more than 60 Web sites, including Twitter, Flickr and YouTube for easy skimming.

It’s a logical fit for Facebook, which has slowly been shifting its focus to becoming more of a real-time social broadcasting service.

But the bigger win for Facebook may be the technical talent that comes with the deal: FriendFeed’s founders were involved in the creation of Google’s Gmail service.

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Facebook Persian

Facebook tonight has released a test version of its site available in Persian, the native language of Iran. The social network claims that amidst this week’s Twitter use for communication around events in Iran, its users were sharing content in Persian, however the site navigation was only available in English. This change will make it so that “Persian speakers inside of Iran and around the world can begin using it in their native language.

link: Facebook launches in Persian to support communications around events in Iran | Social Business | ZDNet.com

". . . The Merging of Facebook and Twitter with a Potent Opposition Leader. . . ."

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni nations have tense relations with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Shiite-led theocracy ruling Iran. But they don't want protests in Tehran to inspire similar democratic fervor in their countries -- especially the merging of Facebook and Twitter with a potent opposition leader like Iran's presidential challenger, Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

link: Global Development News