FriendFeed is a real-time feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates, as well as any other type of RSS/ Atom feed.^[2] It is possible to use this stream of information to create customized feeds to share, as well as originate new posts-discussions, (and comment) with friends.^[3]

The goal of FriendFeed according to their website is to make content on the Web more relevant and useful by using existing social networks as a tool for discovering interesting information. Users can be an individual, business or organization. Bloggers writing about FriendFeed have said that this service addresses the shortcomings of social media services which exclusively facilitate tracking of their own members' social media activities on that particular social media service, whereas FriendFeed provides the facility to track these activities (such as posting on blogs, Twitter and Flickr) across a broad range of different social networks.^[4] Some bloggers are concerned about readers commenting on their posts inside FriendFeed instead of on their blogs, resulting in fewer page views for the blogger.^[5]

The founders are all former Google Inc. employees who were involved in the launch of services such as Gmail and Google Maps. They include Paul Buchheit, Jim Norris, Sanjeev Singh and Bret Taylor. Venture capital agency Benchmark Capital is involved with the investment funding.

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, California and had on average one million monthly visitors. Employees of FriendFeed created the Simple Update Protocol to reduce the load put on sites by aggregators such as theirs.

On August 10, 2009, Facebook Inc. agreed to acquire FriendFeed.^[6] FriendFeed was bought for $15 million in cash, and $32.5 million in Facebook stock.^[7]

Supported services[link]

A user can configure their FriendFeed account to aggregate content from the following services:

References[link]

See also[link]

• Locker (software), an open source alternative that aims to provide a similar, but more ambitious service.

External links[link]

• FriendFeed
• FriendFeed Is This Years Twitter, But Why?
• Friendfeed.com raises $5m VC
• FriendFeed: All The Numbers That Matter (infographic)

Listen to this article (info/dl)

This audio file was created from a revision of the "FriendFeed" article dated 2008-07-12, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)

More spoken articles

Bret Taylor
Taylor in July 2009
Born	1979/1980 (age 31–32)[1]
Residence	Mountain View, California
Education	Stanford University
Occupation	CTO at Facebook
Known for	FriendFeed, Google Maps
Website
bret.appspot.com

Bret Taylor is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He was the co-creator of Google Maps and the Google Maps API.^[2][3] Taylor left Google in June 2007 to join venture capital firm Benchmark Capital as an entrepreneur-in-residence, where he and Jim Norris, another former Google employee, created the social network web site FriendFeed.^[4][5] Taylor was the CEO of FriendFeed until August 2009, when the company was acquired by Facebook for an estimated $50 million.^[6] Taylor is currently the CTO of Facebook.^[7]

Taylor also co-wrote and maintains Tornado web server. The software was created at FriendFeed and was open-sourced after FriendFeed was acquired by Facebook in 2009.^[8]

Taylor attended Stanford University, where he earned his bachelor's degree (2002) and master's degree (2003) in computer science.^[9][10]

References[link]

1. ^ Lashinsky, Adam (October 14, 2010). "40 under 40". Fortune. http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/fortune/1010/gallery.40_under_40.fortune/27.html. 
2. ^ "Mapping your way". Google. 2005-02-08. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/02/mapping-your-way.html. Retrieved 2009-09-19. 
3. ^ "The world is your JavaScript-enabled oyster". Google. 2005-06-29. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/06/world-is-your-javascript-enabled_29.html. Retrieved 2009-09-19. 
4. ^ "Two top Google engineers leave — to Benchmark Capital". VentureBeat. 2007-06-20. http://venturebeat.com/2007/06/20/two-top-google-engineers-leave-to-benchmark-capital/. Retrieved 2009-09-19. 
5. ^ Markoff, John (2007-10-01). "Service Helps Friends Share Their Online Discoveries". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/technology/01feed.html. Retrieved 2009-09-19. 
6. ^ Vascellaro, Jessica E. (2009-08-11). "Facebook Acquires Start-Up FriendFeed". Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124993350820120361.html. Retrieved 2009-09-19. 
7. ^ McCarthy, Caroline (2010-06-02). "Facebook promotes Bret Taylor to CTO". CNET News. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20006634-36.html. Retrieved 2010-06-02. 
8. ^ "Tornado: Facebook's Real-Time Web Framework for Python". Facebook. 2009-09-10. http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=301. Retrieved 2009-09-19. 
9. ^ "Executive Bios". Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?execbios. Retrieved 2011-02-18. 
10. ^ Bret Taylor at CrunchBase. Retrieved 2011-02-18.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Bret Taylor

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (June 2011)

Paul Buchheit is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He was the creator and lead developer of Gmail. He developed the original prototype of Google AdSense as part of his work on Gmail. He also suggested the company's now-famous motto "Don't be evil" in a 2000 meeting on company values,^[1] although the phrase was introduced earlier at Google in 1999 by Amit Patel, one of Google's first engineers.^[2]

Buchheit grew up in Webster, New York and went to college at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He worked at Intel and later became the 23rd employee at Google.

Buchheit was a founder of the startup FriendFeed, which was launched in 2007 and was acquired by Facebook in 2009, in a private transaction.

In 2010, Buchheit left Facebook to become a partner at the investment firm Y Combinator. From 2006 (when he started investing) until 2008, Paul invested about $1.21 million in 32 different companies.^[3] He also continues to oversee angel investments of his own, in (by his own estimate) "about 40" startups.^[4]

He won the 2011 The Economist Innovation Awards for the Computing and telecommunications field.^[5]

References[link]

1. ^ "Paul Buchheit on Gmail, AdSense and More". Google Blogoscoped. 2007-07-16. http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-07-16-n55.html. Retrieved 2009-03-03. 
2. ^ "Don't Be Evil or don't lose value? - BizTech - Technology - smh.com.au". The Sydney Morning Herald. 2007-07-16. http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/dont-be-evil/2008/04/15/1208025168177.html?page=3. Retrieved 2011-22-11. 
3. ^ "Angel investing, my first three years". Paul Buchheit's Blog. 2011-01-03. http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2011/01/angel-investing-my-first-three-years.html. Retrieved 2011-01-03. 
4. ^ "Facebook's Paul Bucheit Talks About Facebook, Google, and His New Gig". Los Angeles Times. 2010-11-12. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/11/facebooks-paul-buchheit-talks-about-facebook-google-and-his-new-gig.html. Retrieved 2010-11-14. 
5. ^ "Monitor And the winners were…Innovation awards: Our annual prizes recognise successful innovators in eight categories. Here are this year’s winners", The Economist, dated 3 Dec 2011.

External links[link]

• Paul Buchheit's blog
• FriendFeed
  • Paul Buchheit's FriendFeed
• Paul Buchheit's Twitter
• Interview with Paul Buchheit at Facebook
• One hour Interview with Paul Buchheit on Econtalk Podcast

This biographical article relating to a computer specialist in the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e