by Brett K., Developer Buddy

There’s no denying Facebook’s overwhelming dominance within the social networking arena.  With traffic numbers quickly approaching Google-esque levels (and trouncing those of the Internet supersites of yesteryear), their growth seems to have an almost “Manifest Destiny” quality. At the social media poker table, Facebook is peering over at you from behind a formidable, hard-fought stack of chips that would make a Sultan blush.

Conversely, we have FriendFeed.  Started by a handful of former Google engineers, it doesn’t have even a small fraction of Facebook’s user base. What it does have, however, is something that Facebook (and it’s users) have been getting all frothy over lately – real-time search. Coupled with the obvious talent behind the FriendFeed curtain, Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed makes a whole lot of sense, at least from a business perspective.

People have been quick to opine that this move is meant to strengthen Facebook’s position against Twitter (to which FriendFeed was often compared, in terms of service capability) and to more firmly establish Facebook as a serious player in the realm of short-form, real-time social networking. Personally (and I’m not alone in thinking this), I believe it to be a strategic maneuver to position the company to take on the undisputed Internet gorilla – Google.

Obviously, Google is the king of search.  Their stated goal of “organizing the world’s information” (augmented by the tacit by-product of that goal, targeted advertising based on said information) is one toward which they’ve made amazing strides. Their bread and butter is the advertising, so the more information they have about a given user, the better targeted the advertising will be (and thus, the more they can charge for it). But what does all of this have to do with Facebook?  Well, with a user base of over 200 million (100 million of which log in to the site at least once per day) and an astoundingly detailed amount of personal data about each user (including hobbies, interests, employment data and relationships), they’ve managed to amass a collection of data that could (and should) make Google very, very nervous.

Facebook is a shining example of a “walled garden” in that, for all of its massive amounts of user data, it doesn’t allow any of its private pages (where the real gold lies) to be indexed by search engines. Considering their ability to target ads much more effectively than Google (and their somewhat questionable use of personal data as described in their fairly fluid Terms of Use document), they are in the unique and desirable position to offer advertisers a laser-focused home for their inventory. This is something Google is trying to do, but simply doesn’t have the right data with which to work.

So, bringing it back to FriendFeed – Google is moving more and more toward making their search as real-time as possible with the advent of Pubsubhubbub and the new Google search engine, code name “Caffeine” (which purports to increase indexing and searching speeds dramatically). But the technology developed at FriendFeed allows real-time search of over 50 different social media properties, the results of which can be consumed as an RSS feed and, therefore, re-purposed in any number of ways. This is the type of capability about which the social media marketing community has been dreaming – the ability to sit back and watch all of the mentions of a brand whiz by and use that same data to track a brand’s social media performance over time.

It is uncertain how Facebook will utilize the FriendFeed technology, but I believe the greatest value for their acquisition dollar is in the talent of the FriendFeed engineers. Their insight and knowledge will go a long way in helping Facebook become more whole as a social networking destination, particularly among the Silicon Valley types who value real-time among most everything else (at least, today). The fact that this may spell trouble for Twitter is, in my opinion, an ancillary benefit.

Brett Developer at The Buddy Group

This post is the author's opinion and not necessarily that of The Buddy Group™ (unless it's about ice cream - they never disagree about that).