It seems the reaction from FriendFeed fans has been cool to say the least. It's probably best summed up by this Hitler meme video (the latest in a long line of Hitler memes).
The deal does highlight the value that is increasingly being placed on real-time search. Facebook has seen the threat of Twitter and its latest acquisition is most certainly a move to combat Twitter's advantage in real-time search.
TechCrunch has interviewed FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor and Facebook VP Products Chris Cox and it seems likely that FriendFeed will continue to operate independently for a while, but will eventually be integrated into Facebook.
Many commentators believe the move is a talent grab. FriendFeed has 12 employees, 11 of which are engineers and many are ex-Google.
It is to the benefit of Facebook as it tries to up its game in real-time search to have the FriendFeed minds developing products that may work for Facebook.
Despite the recent news of the Bing/Yahoo search collaboration, perhaps the real battle in searchland is going to be fiercest at the cutting edge environment of real-time search.
