Back in December I wrote a Post "Will Facebook Survive the Future of the Internet". I basically questioned the viability of Facebook because it did not aggregate enough content about people of interest to the user. While the pundits and experts are explaining Facebook's purchase of FriendFeed as a talent acquisition, I think this conclusion misses the bigger strategic issue.
Every morning more and more people begin their day by checking email, Twitter, Facebook and blogs of interest. That probably takes 1-2 hours. After that much time, you have to get to work or get on with your day. Few people also have the time to check FriendFeed, Stumble Upon, Digg, etc. It's too inconvenient and it takes too much time to check another 5-10 sites for news, information or content from friends and business contacts. This is the pain!
I think Facebook acquired FriendFeed in order to quickly expand it's technology to aggregate more content for the people you are interested in. I imagine that within 1-2 years, FaceBook will offer users the ability to integrate content from 50-100 sites where they have content. This will enable followers to much more easily read and review much larger amounts of information from people they value. This efficiency, which is very responsive to a customer need, is the reason for the acquisition of FriendFeed.
I think the next step for FaceBook will be to start mining this greatly expanded wealth of data with semantic search or something like Calais. Imagine asking FaceBook for statistics on the number of subscribers that use three different models of cell phones or for the most popular articles captured by FaceBook on "viral marketing". That's where I think FaceBook is ultimately headed--to make the expanded content easily searchable for its users.
If I was Google, I would be thinking hard about how to increase the value of search. Mashed up Google maps is a nice feature but it may not sustain you if Facebook's content becomes searchable. FaceBook, the world's then largest recommendation engine on everything (content, posts, products, events) might be a formidable competitor.
p.s. Google, if you need help figuring all this out, just send me an email.
Miami, FL
