With FriendFeed, Facebook Aims to Rule Social Media

Facebook’s $47.5 million purchase of FriendFeed is about more than competing with Twitter in real-time search, Chadwick Matlin argues for the Washington Post. Facebook could use FriendFeed and Facebook Connect to become a “social media aggregator”—a hub for all content its users create and peruse on the Internet at large.

FriendFeed collects a user’s social-media activity—Tweets, Digged articles, Flickr photos are all funneled back through a FriendFeed page, or soon, Matlin predicts, your Facebook feed. Facebook Connect does the same for comments posted on blog posts or news articles, so the two could easily be integrated to make Facebook a one-stop portal. If that happens, Facebook and Google—which has already consolidated the non-social aspects of our Internet usage—would be two mega-conglomerates vying for control of the consolidated Internet.
(More Facebook stories.)