Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details now.

At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few of features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates.

Obviously Facebook has already built out some of FriendFeed’s functionality so there is some overlap, but there are still numerous ways FriendFeed beats out Facebook’s News Feed setup. One of these is the way stories are ‘floated’ to the top as new users comment on them. And FriendFeed’s system is truly real-time, unlike Facebook’s feed which users have to manually refresh.

But the biggest win here for Facebook is the FriendFeed team, which includes an all-star cast of ex-Googlers. Perhaps best known of these is Paul Buchheit, who is responsible for creating Gmail, pioneering some of Google’s early (and incredibly lucrative) advertising products, and coining Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto. Other ex-Googler co-founders include Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, and Sanjeev Singh.

And so begins the next step in Facebook’s assault on Twitter.

Update:: Facebook has just issued the following press release:

PALO ALTO, CALIF.—August 10, 2009—Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founder. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released

Via [Tech Crunch]

If you are looking for a way to share and store your files online then Dropbox could be your solution.  This easy to use interface allows you to sync files automatically to your computers and the web.After a short install to your Windows, Mac or Linux based computer, you have the ability to drag and drop files into your Dropbox folder. Any files or folders inside Dropbox will get synchronized to Dropbox’s servers and any other computer linked to your account. This data is also accessible by using the web interface at www.getdropbox.com. If you are concerned about security, rest easy. All data is transferred over SSL and encrypted with AES-256 before storage. If you currently utilize Apple’s MobileMe you will find that Dropbox is very similar. It has some added functionality for file sharing and includes access for Linux users which is a group that Apple failed to recognize. The cost is perfect for most users. It’s free with 2GB of space. Deleted files and revisions don’t currently count against your quota. If you are looking for more storage, you have the ability to upgrade to 50GB of space for $9.99 per month or $99 per year. Dropbox is also smart with how it tracks changes to files. When a change is made, Dropbox only transfers the piece of the file that changed, making it easy to work with big files like Photoshop or Powerpoint documents. In looking at this site and service it was hard to find any reason not to take advantage of something like this. For a link to download the software and more information, please go to www.getdropbox.com. Try this out and let me know what you think in the comment section below.

Today i checked out WePc.com. Intel and ASUS has teamed up and  created a site where you can bulid, draw or upload a picture of your dream PC. The users on the site vote on the best dream pc.  Also ,Your designs, feature ideas and community feedback will be evaluated by ASUS and could influence the blueprint for an actual notebook PC built by ASUS with Intel inside.

How Cool!  Get over to

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and get designing.

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