I go on vacation for a week and…

by jeffhilimire on August 14, 2009

View of beach at St. George Island

View of beach at St. George Island

I had the great fortune to spend last week at St. George Island, FL, with my family.  We had a fantastic time and if you haven’t been, you should go.  They call it the “Florida’s Forgotten Coast”.

While I was out, a TON of stuff happened with Facebook.  I thought I’d point out the major happenings and give my 2 cents as appropriate.

Facebook buys FriendFeed. That was a surprise to me, as was the reported $50MM price tag.  I’m not sure what value that Facebook would find in FriendFeed.  Most of the people I know see FriendFeed more as an aggregator of content vs. a viable social channel.  We’ll see if they keep it up and keep supporting it, but I bet it dies a slow death from this point.

Facebook announces they will have a Facebook Lite thingamabob. There isn’t a ton of info out about Facebook Lite yet.  My sense here is that Facebook has seen what developers have done with Twitter’s API – mainly making better user experience apps than Twitter.com.  Facebook probably doesn’t want to have the same thing happen to them (though to me the ability to have developers create platforms like that is a huge way to grow users).

Actually Facebook did a ton of other stuff last week. You can read about it, but to me the most interesting of the lot is the announcement of real-time search.  This has been a long time coming and something Facebook HAD to do in order to capitalize on the massive amount of content being produced on its platform.  Good job here.

So that’s about it.  Next time you want to see Facebook make a lot of advancements, send me on vacation ;)

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Tagged as: facebook, facebook lite, friendfeed

  • sherryheyl
    Facebook is facing a ton of challenges right now. The biggest is their rapid growth and the diversity of demands that their variety users are making.

    I was not real sure about their acquisition of Friendfeed either. Someone once suggested to me that Facebook is trying to be the portal to the web, like AOL was a long long time ago, so the Friendfeed acquisition/aggregator fits that idea, but Facebook also suggests that it is a closed network, in that it has resisted letting aggregators have Facebook content...

    The real-time search also fits the idea of Facebook becoming the portal to the web...but....again, there is the privacy issue. Facebook attracted certain demographics who felt that they had control over their content and who would see their content, but there has been a constant push - pull over whether or not that can be a realistic expectation.

    I have lots more thoughts running through my head, but they would have to be explored over lunch :)
  • You got it. I'm going to set up a digital trends lunch, open-invite and see who wants to attend. Be on the look out!
  • And here I thought this post was going to be about the new magazines that you found on the break room tables when we stopped in for the FFL draft. Apologies if this should go on the Personal Blog instead. :-)
  • Ah yes, the infamous magazines. Looking at your team, you were wlidly distracted ;)
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