Any guestimates on the acquisition price? It'll be fun to point back here if we ever find out.
According to WSJ, roughly $15MM in cash, $32.5MM in Facebook stock, based on the previous $6.5 billion valuation.
Facebook Acquires FriendFeed
71–80 of 88 posts
Re: Facebook Acquires FriendFeed
#72The problem is with so many big social graphs already on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc. it's difficult to build another. They were competing against Twitter and Facebook at the same time. Twitter is getting masses of press and Facebook already has masses of users. FriendFeed had a good product technically but still weren't getting there in gaining active users.
If you look at friendfeed's stats they've leveled off for the last 7 months http://siteanalytics.compete.com/friendfeed.com/
FriendFeed was a technology company they know search, real-time, scaling etc. but social networking isn't just those things. Facebook gets the interface and it clearly works for people, but they have so far not done much with realtime, and since it's new I expect there are very few people that have experience of that.
To me, both sides needed this, friendfeed had stopped growing and Facebook needs to evolve against Twitter and the trend for realtime (on the web) in general.
Re: Facebook Acquires FriendFeed
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
General questions about "talent acquisitions" ... when it happens, what's to keep the talent from leaving? Is it generally a scenario where the talent wouldn't sell if they didn't want to stay on board–or are there also clauses in the acquisition that actually prevent them from leaving?
My understanding is that usually a significant part of the payout is in stock, which will vest over a couple years.
Facebook stock? haha
Re: Facebook Acquires FriendFeed
#74Wow, congrats to Paul Buchheit and the rest of the Friendfeed team!
Yep, I'm really happy for Paul. He's proven to be an astute investor and a great founder.
Re: Facebook Acquires FriendFeed
#75I'm puzzled by this acquisition from FriendFeed founder & CEO Paul Buchheit's perspective. As employee #23 at Google, Paul was already independently wealthy when he started FriendFeed. Though getting richer seems a likely secondary motive, I always figured FriendFeed was primarily a way for Paul to have the excitement of running his own company. Now he will (presumably) become an employee at Facebook, in exchange for an amount of money that can't possibly represent the bulk of his net worth. That doesn't seem like a particularly good outcome to me. Does anyone know any different?
Re: Facebook Acquires FriendFeed
#76I really hope friendfeed can stay independent, and grow itself into something much bigger. On the other hand, this should create opportunities for other social aggregation startups.
Bigger than what? Facebook? The company that owns them?
Just close down Friendfeed now.
Re: Facebook Acquires FriendFeed
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
$25-50 million
way high, think more like <10mm , plus great signing bonuses for the employees (200k+ ea) ..
Just for the record, I was spot on:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/the-cost-of-friendfeed-...
Re: Facebook Acquires FriendFeed
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Define 'reputable guesser'. It was a fair comment in the context of the thread. Predictions should be rewarded or punished based on whether they eventually pan out, not armchair snap-judgment popularity. The fact that it's different from the pack of similar guesses makes it a more valuable contribution, to me, even if it winds up wrong.
Again, I downvoted because he provided no commentary or justification.
It was just a guess, thanks for bringing the comment back to 1 (even) - I now see that TC has it at 50mm, that is really high in my head... and now twitter has one less exit option.
It did say 15mm was cash. Guess that is still 50% off...
Re: Facebook Acquires FriendFeed
#79I'm puzzled by this acquisition from FriendFeed founder & CEO Paul Buchheit's perspective. As employee #23 at Google, Paul was already independently wealthy when he started FriendFeed. Though getting richer seems a likely secondary motive, I always figured FriendFeed was primarily a way for Paul to have the excitement of running his own company. Now he will (presumably) become an employee at Facebook, in exchange for…
I don't think that Paul Bucheit is CEO
Re: Facebook Acquires FriendFeed
#80I'm puzzled by this acquisition from FriendFeed founder & CEO Paul Buchheit's perspective. As employee #23 at Google, Paul was already independently wealthy when he started FriendFeed. Though getting richer seems a likely secondary motive, I always figured FriendFeed was primarily a way for Paul to have the excitement of running his own company. Now he will (presumably) become an employee at Facebook, in exchange for…
Goals change. Especially when faced with cash and wealth.