Facebook is Shutting Down FriendFeed

Posted on March 9, 2015

Facebook is shutting down FriendFeed. The social aggregator was popular around the time Facebook bought it in 2009 for around $47 million, $15 million in cash and $32 million in stock. The service was founded by Bret Taylor, Paul Buchheit, Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh.

It is not known how many people are still using FriendFeed but it is considerably less popular than it was during its peak. The service contained streams of feeds from other services. Users could also post information directly to FriendFeed.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on August 10, 2009 in a release about the acquisition, "Since I first tried FriendFeed, I've admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information."

Facebook issued the following statement to Re/code: "We've been maintaining the service for the last five years, but usage has been declining steadily and the community is now just a fraction of what it once was. Given this, we've decided that it's time to start winding things down. Our thanks go out to the FriendFeed community for its many years of support."

FriendFeed will be officially shut down on April 9.