Facebook Acquires FriendFeed, Microsoft Sells Off Razorfish
The big Facebook-related news today (yesterday the news was that Facebook is bad for your relationship) is that the social networking site has acquired FriendFeed – the acquisition has been officially confirmed by Facebook as well as FriendFeed. This after rumors about a possible acquisition were flying around like crazy.
Co-founder and CEO of the social network aggregator FriendFeed, Brad Taylor, commented: “We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team. We've always been great admirers of Facebook, and our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we've developed at FriendFeed to Facebook's 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook's passionate engineers to create even more ways for you to easily share with your friends online.”
Details on the acquisition are a bit sketchy at this moment in time; here is what we know so far:
- Facebook will take on all of FriendFeed’s employees (should be mentioned that FriendFeed has 12 employees in total).
- The four founders of FriendFeed will take on various positions (senior roles that is) on the engineering and product teams at Facebook.
- FriendFeed will go on with business as usual, at least until the two companies agree on a long term plan for the online sharing service.
- If you were wondering how much Facebook paid for FriendFeed, you’re out of luck as financial details about the acquisition have not been released.
Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, comments: “Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information. As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”
In related news, Redmond-based software giant Microsoft has been doing some trading of its own. The company has agreed to sell Razorfish, its marketing branch, to Publicis Groupe, a French advertising company. Microsoft will get $530 million out of the deal – and will form a Strategic Alliance with Publicis, alliance that allows Razorfish customers to search ads from Microsoft and make online purchases at a discount.
Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, comments: “We are grateful for the contributions Razorfish has made to our online advertising business since joining the company as a part of the aQuantive acquisition in 2007, and are pleased that they have found a new long-term home with Publicis Groupe. We look forward to continuing to work with Razorfish as one of our agencies, and we're confident that as a part of Publicis Groupe, Razorfish will build on its success to date in the digital advertising industry.”
Co-founder and CEO of the social network aggregator FriendFeed, Brad Taylor, commented: “We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team. We've always been great admirers of Facebook, and our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we've developed at FriendFeed to Facebook's 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook's passionate engineers to create even more ways for you to easily share with your friends online.”
Details on the acquisition are a bit sketchy at this moment in time; here is what we know so far:
- Facebook will take on all of FriendFeed’s employees (should be mentioned that FriendFeed has 12 employees in total).
- The four founders of FriendFeed will take on various positions (senior roles that is) on the engineering and product teams at Facebook.
- FriendFeed will go on with business as usual, at least until the two companies agree on a long term plan for the online sharing service.
- If you were wondering how much Facebook paid for FriendFeed, you’re out of luck as financial details about the acquisition have not been released.
Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, comments: “Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information. As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”
In related news, Redmond-based software giant Microsoft has been doing some trading of its own. The company has agreed to sell Razorfish, its marketing branch, to Publicis Groupe, a French advertising company. Microsoft will get $530 million out of the deal – and will form a Strategic Alliance with Publicis, alliance that allows Razorfish customers to search ads from Microsoft and make online purchases at a discount.
Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, comments: “We are grateful for the contributions Razorfish has made to our online advertising business since joining the company as a part of the aQuantive acquisition in 2007, and are pleased that they have found a new long-term home with Publicis Groupe. We look forward to continuing to work with Razorfish as one of our agencies, and we're confident that as a part of Publicis Groupe, Razorfish will build on its success to date in the digital advertising industry.”
