Filed under: Social Software, Analysis, web 2.0
Facebook-FriendFeed marriage guarantees future of social media d**ch*bags
What do you get when you take a gaggle of enthusiastic, early-adopting online marketers and introduce them to one of the world's largest directories of job-seeking college students? We're about to find out, now that Facebook is acquiring FriendFeed. The move should mean improved versions of the real-time status and conversation features that Facebook was already moving toward, but that's not all Facebook bought. It's also getting most of FriendFeed's users.It's not as if social media, um, d-bags, didn't know Facebook existed. Au contraire, they've been all over it for at least a year, begging people to become fans of their clients. College students, however, are about to find out that social media jobs exist, and are one of the best rackets going. Wait, you mean I can bother people online, using networks I was already signed up to anyway, and get paid for it? When do I start?
Social media isn't going away any time soon, and it has a lot of upside, but it also has a lot of our attention. It's one of the few places marketers can still get eyeballs, and members of the first generation that really grew up with it are about to enter the workforce and start selling things to one another. Maybe it was inevitable -- and maybe it will burn out after a while, to make room for new models based on new technology -- but I'm willing to bet we'll look back and point to the time FriendFeed met Facebook as the moment it really started to accelerate.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3tear said 7:30PM on 8-10-2009
This is a terribly written article.
Reply
Malteserr said 7:53PM on 8-10-2009
Just like your comment then
p-diddy said 8:30PM on 8-10-2009
Er, no offense, but I agree with the OP. I had trouble following the article.
I'm with the author up until (rewritten for clarity):
The move should mean improved versions of the real-time status and conversation features that Facebook was already moving toward. But that's not all Facebook bought; it's also getting most of FriendFeed's users.
[Then I get lost]
It's not as if social media, um, d-bags, didn't know Facebook existed. [OK, if you're on FriendFeed, you're probably on FB, though "d-bag" is out of left field]
Au contraire, they've been all over it for at least a year, begging people to become fans of their clients.
[Wait, who is begging whom to become fans of what clients? I gather from later sentences that there are people on FriendFeed or FB that are trying to get FB users to be "fans" of the FB/FF user's client? What clients are you talking about? You haven't established that anyone is being hired to sit on FB/FF all day to troll for followers/fans. If that is even what you are saying.]
College students, however, are about to find out that social media jobs exist, and are one of the best rackets going. Wait, you mean I can bother people online, using networks I was already signed up to anyway, and get paid for it? When do I start?
[Again, I'm not clear here based on what came before. I guess there are people with social media jobs, and you refer to these people as d-bags. Then there is the component of your story that implies there are numerous jobs out there for people to troll social networking sites looking for followers/fans, and soon, college graduates will stumble upon these jobs.]
Social media isn't going away any time soon, and it has a lot of upside, but it also has a lot of our attention. It's one of the few places marketers can still get eyeballs, and members of the first generation that really grew up with it are about to enter the workforce and start selling things to one another. Maybe it was inevitable -- and maybe it will burn out after a while, to make room for new models based on new technology -- but I'm willing to bet we'll look back and point to the time FriendFeed met Facebook as the moment it really started to accelerate.
[Ahh - this was good. Good intro, good development, good conclusion.]
Reply
Sax25 said 9:32PM on 8-10-2009
+1
I think Jay is trying to take Victors crown! Writing at DLS is getting pretty sloppy these days.
I did not understand anything either. I was lost the whole way through. I gave up at the end of the 2nd paragraph because I was like "wtf was all that even about?"
Glen Quagmire said 9:14PM on 8-10-2009
wat???
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jfjb said 9:56PM on 8-10-2009
who says "C'est la vie" when it comes to the web events?
If nobody did, I'm doing it right now, in case nobody ever noticed that real life is shuffling itself to the bubble -- ahem... or the cloud -- of the Web.2. Or is it Web.3? Anybody keeping track of that one?
Facebook me not.
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Butters said 11:03AM on 8-11-2009
So we have to censor the word "douche" now?
Oops! :)
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Kelsey said 11:24AM on 8-24-2009
I don't get it....what is the point of this article?
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