14 DAY TRIAL // The chatter is once again picking up around FriendFeed, the real-time social aggregator Facebook acquired a couple of months ago. At the time of the deal many were left wondering about the fate of the service which, despite not becoming as successful as hoped, managed to secure a core of loyal users and to stay ahead in the innovation department. Not much has been said since, and despite claims that the service won't be shut down, users have mostly abandoned it.
Now FriendFeed cofounder Paul Bucheit has decided to come out with some clarifications though the future of the service is as vague as ever. “There was a lot of chatter about the future of FriendFeed this weekend. The short answer is that the team is working on a couple of longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world. Transformation is not the end. Consider this the chrysalis stage — if all goes well, a beautiful butterfly will emerge,” Bucheit wrote in a FriendFeed post.
The message tries to be reassuring but ends up confirming the rather bleak future that awaits FriendFeed in its current form. A couple of preeminent bloggers, both great supporters of FriendFeed, raised concerns about the future of the service and the fact that the activity on the site died down after the news of the acquisition. Everything is still there, in terms of features and functionality, but nobody wants to invest in a dead service.
At the time of the acquisition, many argued that Facebook bought FriendFeed for its talent, as the service was backed by a small but all-star team of engineers. The four cofounders are all ex-googlers and were behind products like Gmail and Google Maps. Facebook is no doubt at work integrating some of FriendFeed's best features but it may be a while until the social network can be seen as a proper replacement if ever. The project may very well be open-sourced – an underlying component has already been released as an open-source project – but this won't help save FriendFeed either. Something may still pop up but as time passes the service is losing even more users.