TechPulse 360

FriendFeed has a simpler and lighter user experience than Facebook, says FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor

Jackpot for social sharing site FriendFeed, as neighbour Facebook said today it acquired the 12-persons, less than 2-year old company for – according to the Wall Street Journal – an amazing $50 million in both cash and stock-options.

It so happened that late last week we talked to FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor about his company at the Lunch 2.0 event hosted by Kosmix; and that one of the questions that came out was how his service is different from Facebook:

“We’ve just optimized the experience to be a little simpler [than Facebook]. We’re not a full-fledged social network: you don’t put your relationship status, you don’t get to list your mom, your dad, your sister and every single one of your friends. It’s a very simple model. You just subscribe to the people you’re interested in and you get a stream of what they’re sharing and you can comment on it. It’s very lightweight,” told Taylor.

FriendFeed wants to use your friends to filter your information

Another feature that Taylor mentioned – and I wished Facebook had – was email integration. Yes, that old email thing. “So everytime my mom posts something, it’s sent to me by email and I can comment by just replying to the email. It sort of fits in the workflows of our users, so they don’t need to change their behaviour. They don’t need to go to FriendFeed.com every single day… they can just treat it like a mailing list!,” added Taylor.

On Twitter, Taylor thinks that FriendFeed is a lot more richer as users can attach and share virtually anything like photos and videos, while not sacrificing the real-time aspect of the service.

Another thing that came out was the already international stature of FriendFeed:

1. The site is already translated in 12 languages by professional translators;
2. 64% of the users come from outside the U.S.;

Finally, FriendFeed’s vision is to use your friends to help you filter the ever growing growth of information you’re receiving from the Internet. “The product that really works well for people, isn’t there yet. We’re trying to develop it, I think we’ve done some interesting things but we have a lot to do,” explained Taylor.

As of revenue model, which is frankly less important now as the startup integrates inside Facebook, Taylor mentioned advertising of course but inside your friend’s feed.

Here’s a video excerpt of our conversation with FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor: