In
a world where the real social media players count their subscribers in
the tens or hundreds of millions,
Friendfeed hardly moves the needle.
Mired
at a million or so unique visitors a month and facing the likelihood of
being crushed to a fine powder when
Google Wave hits the streets,
Friendfeed's investors and managers decided to take the first convenient off ramp when
Facebook came a-calling.
By now you've probably heard the
specifics, since practically anyone with a keyboard has been
breathlessly tapping away since the deal was made public late Monday:
$50 million, most of which will be paid in Facebook stock. A nice
payday for Friendfeed's small team (and most likely a relief to the
company's investors, who must have known Friendfeed wasn't going
anywhere as a solo act). But not a vast sum of money for a company that
pays a million dollars a month just the keep the lights on.
So why all the attention?
Friendfeed was (and still is) arguably one of the web's most
interesting and reliable applications, particularly in comparison to
Twitter's legendary flakiness. The service aggregates pretty much any
RSS feed you can throw at it, dispensing and indexing it in near real
time. Think of it as Twitter, Google, and Facebook, all rolled into
one. Perhaps too complicated to ever crack the mass market - but an
irresistible playground for hyper-active, hyper-noisy early adopters.
The
same users are screaming bloody murder today over what will most
likely be Friendfeed's swan song. Facebook clearly purchased the
company for its technology and engineering team, and is unlikely to
preserve the Friendfeed website after assimilating its better features.
That's the take of Friendfeed's community, in any case. They're vocal
about it - angry, even. I confess I had a tear or two over it. Being populated by social media
movers and
shakers, the Friendfeed story is punching well above its actual weight.
The real take away
There's a lesson in Friendfeed's sale for all of us who spend time with
social media, interact with customers online, or guide corporate
digital outreach. Here it is: We are playing in somebody else's yard.
And we can be told to go home at any time.
That
API your team just wrote an application for? It can be changed
overnight - or disappear entirely. Maybe you've spent months
developing a customer base on some promising service. A quick weekend
deal, and that service is gone. Just business, of course. Companies
don't run on promises and rainbows forever, and cash is king in a tough
economy. Things can change in the blink of an eye.
In
a way, businesses working social media channels are sharecroppers. So
are all the users. They labor on the services, both creating and
receiving value. But they don't own the fields they cultivate, and can
be put off the land whenever it suits the landlord. That's fine, if one
can afford to leave crops rotting in the field. It's not so cool if you
have to explain why a media line item has suddenly come to grief.
What to keep in mind
At Conversation Agent, we have constantly drawn parallels
between social media and the telephone. This is both a truism and a way
to limit your exposure when choosing a social media portfolio:
We didn't stop using the telephone when the web became available.
Social media is not a replacement for traditional forms of contact with
your staff and customers. Don't sacrifice one for the other.
Diversify.
Friendfeed's disappearance isn't likely to upset many business plans.
What if it had been Twitter, Gmail, or Facebook itself? We got a taste
of tweedom last week, when Twitter crawled into a hole to wait out
a
Denial of Service attack. Is any social media service indispensable to
you? You're headed for trouble.
Backup.
Your customer base should be under your control. If your social media
channel lost all your information, could you recover? Is it even possible to backup data? If not, do you feel good about that?
Farm your own field.
The attractive part of developed social media networks is that your
customers may already be there. It might still make sense to build your
own tools - white label versions of existing services, perhaps. Or
entirely new sites, services, and ways to engage which are under your
control.
Social
media is a wonderful and productive outreach for many companies. But
like any investment, it is not without its risk. Friendfeed folded its
tent and disappeared into the shimmering desert heat with virtually no
warning to its userbase. Who is next?
