Spurned by Twitter – for which it last year offered a rumoured $500m (£300m) – Facebook has instead this week bought FriendFeed, a social networking site that previously had barely scratched the surface of the public consciousness.The deal appears to be an attempt to confound Google by making Facebook the largest space on the web that the search engine cannot index properly. It will also gain three of Google’s former star employees who played a vital role in developing its biggest money-making ideas.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/11/friendfeed-team-boosts-facebook