Facebook buys FriendFeed, Google changes status to: Doh!

Relationship Status: Linked

Facebook pays $42 million and gets a user base of early adopters and a team of ex-Google developers who are leading the way in real-time search. Should Google be worried?

FriendFeed offers a set of active search filters that would be very useful for Facebook, but not in their current state. In my opinion, the FriendFeed tools become really valuable if they can be integrated as passive search on Facebook, allowing users to filter and find content from friends without initiating any search at all.

The Facebook news feed, where friends share status, links, and photos, is quickly overrun if users have no filtering set. It only takes two or three prolific friends to push content off the feed page in a hurry. The act of hiding a friend on Facebook is the simplest form of filtering. A friend who generates a lot of content, but very little value, can simply be turned off. Friends who provide valuable information stay on the feed page longer.

So why did Google release a public beta of their search engine (code name: Caffeine) on the same day Facebook announced the FriendFeed acquisition. Are they nervous? Currently, Facebook searches are limited to items posted in the last 30 days. Not very threatening. But Facebook poses a threat to Google because the way users find information is less important than the trust they put in the information they find.

Think about searching vacation destinations. I trust the choices of my friends more than the options offered by a thousand faceless search results. What Facebook has over Google is the potential to deliver destinations I might like — based on where my friends went — potentially, a much higher-quality recommendation than a paid search result.

Quality matters to us. According to Forrester, the #1 most powerful form of advertising is the personal recommendation of a friend — Facebook’s raison d’etre. Search engine optimization isn’t far behind — but in Google’s eyes, neither is Facebook.