London: Facebook on Monday made its most significant acquisition to date, announcing it will buy the social sharing service FriendFeed in a move that will fuel Facebook's drive to enmesh itself more widely throughout the web.
Both companies are privately held and terms of the deal were not released. The announcement follows last year's failed attempt by Facebook to buy Twitter for $500 million (Dh1,835 million). FriendFeed lets users share content and links with a group of followers in real time and broadcast that information across other social networks and blogs. It has about 1 million monthly visitors, according to analytics firm Compete.
Many of its features have been mimicked by Facebook and Twitter, both of which are also trying to develop real-time search capabilities and share content more widely.
Facebook in March redesigned its homepage with a real-time news feed, emulating much of FriendFeed's functionality.
"Over the past year and a half we felt our products and visions were evolving together," said FriendFeed cofounder Bret Taylor. "We really were thinking about these problems in the same way."
FriendFeed's technology for sharing and distributing online content will be put to use as Facebook works to integrate with more sites around the web.