FriendFeed was a real-time feed aggregator that consolidated updates from

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

and

social networking A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

websites,

social bookmarking Social bookmarking is an online service which allows users to add, annotate, edit, and share Internet bookmark, bookmarks of web documents. Many online bookmark management services have launched since 1996; Delicious (website), Delicious, founded i ...

websites, blogs and

microblogging Microblogging is a form of blogging using short posts without titles known as microposts or status updates. Microblogs "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links", which may be the ...

updates, as well as any type of

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many ...

Atom Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a atomic nucleus, nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished fr ...

feed. It was created in 2007 by Bret Taylor, Jim Norris,

Paul Buchheit Paul T. Buchheit (born November 7, 1977) is an American computer engineer and entrepreneur who created the email service Gmail. He developed the original prototype of Google AdSense as part of his work on Gmail. He also suggested Google's former ...

and Sanjeev Singh. It was possible to use this stream of information to create customized feeds to share, as well as originate new posts-discussions, (and comment) with friends. Friendfeed was built on top of

Tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with the surface of Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, although the ...

. The service was shut down at about 21:00 GMT on April 10, 2015, though the service blog announced it a month before. The goal of FriendFeed according to their website was to make content on the Web more relevant and useful by using existing social networks as a tool for discovering interesting information. Users could be an individual, business or organization. Bloggers writing about FriendFeed said that this service addresses the shortcomings of social media services which exclusively facilitate tracking of their own members' social media activities on that particular social media service, whereas FriendFeed provided the facility to track these activities (such as posting on

blogs A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

, and

Flickr Flickr ( ) is an image hosting service, image and Online video platform, video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was previously a co ...

) across a broad range of different social networks. Some bloggers had concerns about readers commenting on their posts on FriendFeed instead of on their blogs, resulting in fewer page views for the blogger. The founders were all former

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

employees who were involved in the launch of services such as

Gmail Gmail is the email service provided by Google. it had 1.5 billion active user (computing), users worldwide, making it the largest email service in the world. It also provides a webmail interface, accessible through a web browser, and is also ...

and

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panorama, interactive panoramic views of streets (Google Street View, Street View ...

. They included Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Sanjeev Singh and Paul Buchheit. Along with the latter two founders,

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

agency

Benchmark Capital Benchmark is a venture capital firm founded in 1995 by Bob Kagle, Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey, and Val Vaden. The firm is known for its equal partnership structure and focus on early-stage investing, typically leading the firs ...

was involved with the investment funding. FriendFeed was based in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the population was 82,376 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mountain V ...

, and had on average one million monthly visitors. Employees of FriendFeed created the Simple Update Protocol to reduce the load put on sites by aggregators such as theirs. On August 10, 2009,

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

agreed to acquire FriendFeed. FriendFeed was bought for $15 million in cash, and $32.5 million in Facebook stock. Facebook, along with a small but active community of users, kept the service going until its pre-announced closure on April 9, 2015.

Supported services

A user could configure their FriendFeed account to aggregate content from the following services:

References

External links

FriendFeed

FriendFeed Is This Years Twitter, But Why?

Friendfeed.com raises $5m VC
{{DEFAULTSORT:Friendfeed Social information processing News aggregators Meta Platforms acquisitions Internet properties established in 2007 Internet properties disestablished in 2015 Companies based in Mountain View, California 2009 mergers and acquisitions Defunct social networking services