If you have a Twitter or Friendfeed account, you’ve no doubt already heard the news that Facebook acquired Friendfeed. But what does that mean to users like you and me?
Granted, the majority of you probably didn’t have a Friendfeed account 48 hours ago. Just last week, I tried to get my Facebook friends to sign up while Twitter was down, and I got a whopping two people to give it a try. My own sister was one of those two. And after a few days, her conclusion was that Friendfeed is overwhelming.
What plans might Facebook have for the future? As Nick O’Neil of AllFacebook.com stated Monday, “…the companies are being relatively tight lipped about information surrounding the acquisition…” So the best we can do is take a quick look and offer a speculation or two.
#1 Friendfeed Remains an External Extension of Facebook
In this scenario, “maybe” Friendfeed retains some autonomy and only functions as an addon of sorts to Facebook users. Who knows. My head hurts just trying to grasp how this makes sense in the context of an acquisition.
#2 1+1=3!!!!
Maybe, MAYBE you put the two together and with the synergy of so many geniuses you get a new product that does more than the sum total of all currently available parts. But since I’m not plugged into the collective, what this looks like is up for debate (and daydream).
#3 Facebook Becomes Your Feed Reader
This is the only obvious scenario that makes sense to me. By merging Friendfeed into Facebook, you could not only see the stream of your friends and groups, but also turn Facebook into your primary feed reader, where you get the latest blog posts, stumbles, diggs, tweets, deliciouses, plurks, and whatever else your little heart desires. Imagine 250 million people leaving Facebook open on their laptops all day long to get the latest everything. In a real way, venturing outside of Facebook might only occur if and when your feed only provides a partial story and you want to read the rest.
By adding Friendfeed technology, you would be able to select which of your friends’ feeds you want to read from anywhere on the Web. You could hide the stuff that gets irritating and still have total control over what type of content you want to see.
The downside:
1. Mobile apps, mobile apps, mobile apps. Someone somewhere needs to develop a mobile app that I don’t hate for both Facebook and Friendfeed. There are half a dozen or more awesome apps for Twitter on the iPhone, but Facebook is way too clunky, trying to make the entire experience available to me with little bitty buttons I can barely click with my finger. Friendfeed is no better, really. They’re way behind in the mobile app department too. Which means the FB and FF collaborative geniuses really need to put their heads together and put out at least one app that is simplified, more like a Twitter app, but continuing the threaded discussion functionality (updating threads upon refresh).
2. Usability. The reason more people don’t use Friendfeed now is that they don’t automatically understand how to adjust all their settings and import all their feeds. That, or they’re lazy and uninterested in awesome web technologies. 
I found that updating my settings were fairly easy on Friendfeed, but I took the time to explore and play around with the site, because that’s just the type of person I am. Facebook users predominantly strike me as the lowest common denominator of cutting edge adaptability. They’re mostly MySpace users who converted because MySpace advertising was so horrible and switching just became the popular thing to do. Most of them don’t use Twitter and have never heard of Friendfeed. Adding all these awesome capabilities only makes sense if the people can figure out how to use them. So we’ll see how that goes. Maybe the early adopters will continue to evangelize their friends until everyone’s loving and fully leveraging Facebook 3.0.
But I doubt it. What do YOU think? Any ideas where this train is headed?
