

The Cost Of FriendFeed: Roughly $50 Million In Cash And Stock - rokhayakebe
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/the-cost-of-friendfeed-roughly-50-million-in-cash-and-stock/

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nuweborder
This is the real prize of the FriendFeed purchase.  Facebook was not purchasing
FriendFeed for the company.  They were purchasing the Google Vets that
developed it.  Knowledge is key, and in the long run, what those FriendFeed
guys know, understand, and are able to share from their experiences in their
careers, education, and employment at Google, is priceless.  The company itself
is just an added bonus.  These guys are the true intellectual property behind
the physical that you see in the URL itself.  With their help, Facebook can
enhance its service in many ways through additional innovation, syncronization
with FriendFeed, and greater competition with Google in the areas of social
media, and maybe even some other aspects of the web business and online
software that the company may be investigating in order to compete, that we
are not 100% aware of at this point.  I advise you to stay tuned for what's to
come from Facebook in the near future. 

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rokhayakebe
With all due respect to Twitter, the FriendFeed acquisition at 1/10th of the
cost was a better investment.  You have the talents behind Gmail, and Google
Maps (I believe), and now they are one of the largest consumer real time apps
out there.  It is also worth noting that they have done a great job at pushing
new features live. 

~~~
charlesju
Is talent really worth $15 M?  Seems a little expensive for a couple of
programmers. 

~~~
rokhayakebe
12 programmers, 1 million + users. 

Now unlike Twitter, friendfeed is not made of a bunch of marketers following
other marketers.  If you follow someone on Tiwtter you get something like
"Thanks for the follow.  I am expecting to learn from you.  Check my
website...". 

Also The discussion around a particular shared item on FF is easier to follow. 

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jimboyoungblood
The number of users FF has that FB didn't already have is approximately zero. 

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ciscoriordan
Should make integrating the userbases pretty easy then. 

~~~
blader
... or pretty irrelevant. 

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elduderino
50 million dollars for a web app?  Is facebook even profitable yet?  Call me a
cynic but i don't think their "billion dollar company" will withstand the
sands of time.  Just wait for the next paradigm shift. 

~~~
blader
Wow, when will stuff like this end?  I've been hearing this since 2004, when
they were like 1% their current size. 

~~~
boucher
It will end when they can sustain profitability.  They are still a long way
from that. 

~~~
drusenko
Really?  Have you seen their financial statements?  How do you know they're far
away from that?  Because everybody else says so? 

Last I heard, they were expected to post $550M of revenue in 2009.  Any insider
you talk to says it would be trivial for them to become profitable, if they
wanted to.  And, in fact, they may be quite close to doing so in their current
plan. 

But then again, I don't have any inside information either.  One thing's for
sure, though: Bringing out the tired "Facebook is overvalued" and "Facebook
will never turn a profit" lines is seriously annoying.