It should be no surprise that today’s news about Facebook’s launching of the Live News feed option for your Facebook status update page has made the front pages of just about every tech blog. Given Facebook’s recent purchase of Friendfeed – or more important the acquisition of the talent behind it – it is no surprise that we are seeing this real time implementation on the status updates.
While a Facebook spokesperson may have told Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb that the purchase of Friendfeed had nothing to do with the implementation of the Live News Feed the timing certainly might suggest otherwise. Even if the two events aren’t connected what we are seeing is the very beginnings of what made Friendfeed the quality service that it was.
As cool as the idea of displaying your status update information in some sort of real time fashion it was also one of my big disagreements with Friendfeed when they introduced it. While it isn’t a bad idea when you list of people you are friends with is closer to the magical Dunbar number it can very quickly become a blur as you follow more people.
There is no argument that we are moving to a more real time web and in many cases this could be a very good thing – but not in all cases in my opinion. Given that Facebook’s user base is much more mainstream that Friendfeed’s was it will be interesting to see how this real time implementation will be received especially by folks who are friends with a large number of people.
