It's All About You

I've been doing some thinking about the Facebook-FriendFeed acquisition, and I think just about everyone has missed the point. The tech press has been going ga-ga over the news of the $50 million acqui, announced last Monday and quickly picked up on Twitter, FriendFeed and across the blogosphere. We're seeing a slew of opinion pieces pop up in daily newspapers, tech rags, and just about everywhere else. Probably not surprising since August is a slow news month, but really, it's starting to get ridiculous.

Commentators--perhaps in an effort to outhype one another--are getting more and more het up about what this could all mean. Some say the deal is Facebook's bid to become a kind of killer app--the platform that replaces Google as most people's home page. Others take it to an even greater extreme, as for example this Washington Post contributor whose view is that this is Facebook's way of taking over the ENTIRE SOCIAL WEB (cue eerie music...).

Here's what I think is missing from the discussion. We can wear ourselves out wondering whether Facebook is going to become our de facto site of choice (which I very much doubt it will). But more interesting to me is what it says about how central social media is becoming to our working and personal lives--not to mention breaking down the barriers between the two.

What Facebook is attempting to do, I think, is to incorporate functionality that will feed our growing fascination with the social web. This seems like a good thing. Certainly, for those who enjoy social networking for its purely social elements, it could be a nice way to bring more cool stuff under one roof. Beyond that, I think it could be a positive boon for those of us who recognize its potential for creating a far richer and more rewarding work and business life for ourselves.

And now for some perspective. Mashable reported last March that social networking is now more popular than email as an online activity. In fact, it's been almost a year now that social networking has surpassed porn as one of the top online activities. So to me the question is, how can the enhancement of these tools help people build what branding expert Dan Schwabel has so astutely termed "Me 2.0"? And for the answers to that, I plan to sit back, relax, and enjoy the future as it arrives.

FriendBook? FaceFeed?

Some news broke today that was like the shattering of a thousand teacups in the hands of a legion of grandmas across the globe: Facebook is acquiring FriendFeed. What to make of this? Will we FriendFeed-ers lose our beloved insider's social network forever? Will Louis Gray end up dating Paul Buchheit? It's such a complicated situation.

The really worst thing about this, in my view is that the FriendFeed team is moving out of has already abandoned its Mountain View digs and is moving to the Facebook offices in Palo Alto.

It's been hard enough to find a table at the Starbucks on University Avenue as it is. Now with all those FriendFeed people in town, it will be that much tougher to find a place for me to sit down and sip a chai latte while staring blankly at my Macbook. OK so maybe I'm being a bit selfish.

Surely there are other downsides. Such as the fact that FriendFeed will probably cease to exist, and instead will be rolled into Facebook's functionality. Still, if I know the pace of these things, it will be another four years before this happens. Witness the fact that Google Video still provisionally exists, three and half years after the much ballyhooed YouTube acquisition. But mainly, I'm worried about the chai.