For the love of God Paul Buchheit, be a man and put FriendFeed out of its misery

The increasingly quiet (see chart above) social streaming service FriendFeed is in its death throws following its talent based acquisition by Facebook in August, but the agony is being made worse by the ramblings of one of its founders.

Friendfeed co-founder Paul Buchheit commented over the weekend on FriendFeed’s demise in a classic case of lets avoid the subject with gobbledygook, writing that the “The short answer is that the team is working on a couple of longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world. Transformation is not the end. Consider this the chrysalis stage — if all goes well, a beautiful butterfly will emerge :)”

Most seem to think that Buchheit didn’t give an answer, but there’s another way of reading part of the response; “a couple of longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world” sounds an awful lot like FriendFeed type features will appear in Facebook, after all, that’s who Buchheit is working for now.

What is clear though is that Buchheit isn’t committing to a future for FriendFeed because there isn’t one. There can be no other explanation because it doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to say these three words “FriendFeed won’t close.”

Paul Buchheit, for the sake of your loyal users, past and present, be a man and put FriendFeed out of its misery by announcing the date the service will close. Those very users helped get FriendFeed to the sales table with Facebook, irrespective of what now seems to be a case of you forgetting that. At the very least, they deserve the truth, not some gobbledygook corporate speak about butterflies.