FriendFeed

The feed that taught Facebook to Like

Shut down
19902026

FriendFeed aggregated everything you did online into one real-time feed, built in 2007 by ex-Google stars including Gmail creator Paul Buchheit and future Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor. Facebook bought it in 2009 for about $47.5 million and absorbed its ideas and people, then shut the site on 9 April 2015.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2007
  2. October 2007 Launch
    FriendFeed launches

    Every online action, aggregated into one real-time feed.

  3. October 2007 Feature
    The Like button debuts

    Two years before Facebook adopts the idea.

  4. 2009
  5. 10 August 2009 Acquisition
    Facebook acquires FriendFeed

    About $47.5 million; the founders take senior Facebook roles.

  6. 2015
  7. 9 March 2015 Shutdown announced
    Shutdown announced

    "Usage has been declining"; a month's notice.

  8. 9 April 2015 Shutdown
    FriendFeed shuts down

    Its DNA lives on in every feed with a Like button.

The site through time

Browse friendfeed.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

FriendFeed Inc. 2007–2009 Founded Ex-Google founding team
Facebook 2009–2015 Acquisition, $47.5M Acquihire; product sunset in 2015

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Facebook, which had acquired FriendFeed in 2009, shut the service on 9 April 2015, citing declining usage.

Our analysis: FriendFeed was an acquihire that worked exactly as designed: Facebook wanted Bret Taylor, Paul Buchheit and their real-time feed ideas, not the product. The Like button and News Feed real-time updates carried its DNA; the site itself was left to age six years before the mercy shutdown.

History [edit]

The prototype for the modern feed

FriendFeed launched in 2007 from a founding team with absurd credentials: Bret Taylor (co-creator of Google Maps), Paul Buchheit (creator of Gmail, coiner of "Don't be evil"), Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh. The product pulled your activity from dozens of services (Flickr photos, blog posts, tweets, bookmarks) into a single real-time stream your friends could follow, and conversations happened right on the items themselves.

It never got huge, but the right people were obsessed: the tech press, early adopters, and notably Facebook, whose News Feed was still refreshing on a timer while FriendFeed updated live. FriendFeed's "Like" button, introduced in 2007, predated Facebook's by two years.

Absorbed

Facebook bought FriendFeed on 10 August 2009 for roughly $15 million in cash and $32.5 million in stock. The founders took senior roles (Taylor became Facebook's CTO), real-time updates and the Like button became core Facebook, and the FriendFeed site itself entered a long maintenance twilight kept alive mostly for its devoted communities, including a famously resilient Italian and Turkish user base. On 9 March 2015 Facebook announced the end, and on 9 April 2015 the feed of feeds went dark.

Similar projects

MySpace A place for friends 2003–now Google+ The social network everyone was signed up to and nobody used 2011–2019 Digg The front page of the web, until v4 2004–2012 Bebo The $850 million write-off 2005–2013 Friendster The social network that came first 2002–2015 Orkut Brazil's living room, built in a 20% project 2004–2014

Sources [edit]

  1. Facebook Agrees to Acquire Sharing Service FriendFeed Facebook 10 August 2009 [archived]
  2. Facebook shutting down FriendFeed, citing declining usage VentureBeat 9 March 2015 [archived]

Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).