Only cost $47.5 million
Analysts have been starting to look at the details of
last week's sale of Friendfeed to social notworking site Facebook and are
worried about what they find. The deal cost $47.5 million but it puts Facebook in an incredibly powerful position.
FriendFeed is an obscure social-media platform that acts
as a clearinghouse for all of your social-media activities. FriendFeed
everything you do online and tells it to the world. So if I post an article on my blog, Friendfeed will tell
all my Facebook friends. It also tells me what they are doing. It does have
limitations but it does put Facebook in an incredible position of control over
lots of rival's antics.
Some of this will enable Facebook to make real-time
searches and provide competition with Twitter however it will also place
Facebook so it could control your social life. Right now the majority of your news feed is filled with
updates that your friends have which are internal to Facebook.
However with a mashed up aggregator you can find out what
everyone is doing outside the social notworking site. But ultimately it will
drive you back to Facebook. Facebook becomes the one portal to rule them all and in
the darkness bind them.