FriendFeed
FriendFeed is a Social Network Aggregator.
It is a service (accessible via the FriendFeed website) which allows individuals who are using multiple social networks to provide themselves and others with a consolidated stream of details of all their activities on the all the different social networks that they use.
Significance
The significance of FriendFeed, as elicited from the comments of those in the media focussing upon new social media phenomena, is that this service addresses the shortcomings of social media services which exclusively facilitate tracking of their own members social media activities (such as posting on blogs) whereas FriendFeed provides the facility to track these activities across a broad range of different social networks,
Controversial repercussions
Rather than post comments on the social media/blogs/news sites which are being tracked, FriendFeed users are beginning to post their comments exclusively on the FriendFeed site, potentially starving the source site of traffic. As the popularity of FriendFeed increases, so does the risk that it becomes a potentially unstoppable ‘poacher’ of other social media networks members, with inevitable monopolistic implications.
Investment background
The founders are all former Google employees who were involved in the launch of such services as GMail and Google Maps.
They include Paul Buchheit, Jim Norris, Sanjeev Singh and Bret Taylor.
References:
The following are news articles and blog postings concerning FriendFeed:
The Conversation Has Left the Blogosphere
Do you have to be in every conversation?
FriendFeed: The Search Engine for Conversations
FriendFeed Is This Years Twitter, But Why?
What does FriendFeed teach us? It's about the people stupid!