Facebook acquires real-time search service FriendFeed

Facebook has acquired real-time search engine FriendFeed, which many industry analysts had expected to be bought by Google or Twitter.

FriendFeed lets users access their social media accounts from one place, bringing together updates from sites such as Facebook and Digg.

While it is expected that FriendFeed will remain a standalone product for the time being, it is thought likely that it will eventually be integrated with Facebook.

Commentators had thought that Google would be the one to acquire FriendFeed, particularly as it was started by four ex-Google employees.

Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and chief executive of Facebook, said: “Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information.

“As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

The deal sees all FriendFeed employees join Facebook while the company’s founders gain senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.