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Google just launched Google Buzz, the company's new social networking service which will be tightly integrated with Gmail. There can be little doubt that Google Buzz looks a lot like FriendFeed, the social aggregation service that was acquired by Facebook in August 2009. Today, FriendFeed's developers are Facebook employees and aren't likely to continue to improve the service in any meaningful way, while the active user community on FriendFeed continues to shrink rapidly. Given the similarities between the two services, we can't help but wonder if Google Buzz will be able to succeed where FriendFeed couldn't.

ShoZu Goes to Critical Path - Cross Network Publishing Doesn't Seem to Be a Stand-Alone Business

Hours after high-profile Silicon Valley social aggregation service Seesmic announced that it acquired angel-backed cross-network publishing service Ping.fm, a similar deal was announced in Europe. Identity management service Critical Path, maker of software called Memova, announced that it has acquired mobile uploading service ShoZu, a company that had received an enormous amount of venture capital.

Dating sites haven't changed much over the years. Oh sure, there are new matchmaking algorithms that claim to have a better shot at connecting you to that "special someone," but a few basic concepts remain. You still have to upload a photo, fill out a profile, list your likes and dislikes, and so on. Doesn't everyone enjoy "long walks on the beach" and "playing with their dog?" How does that help you really get to know who someone is? Gelato thinks they have a better way. Using concepts happily copied from FriendFeed, the social site that seems to be the inspiration for all, Gelato brings the lifestreaming concept into the world of online dating. By connecting you with your social networks, site users can get to know each other in much more natural ways.

Real-time computing is not new. This is the third generation of real-time:

• First generation: was done on a single processor, usually for process control in military systems.

• Second generation: within a Local Area Network, usually for a financial trading room.

• Third generation: applied across the whole Web/Internet, what we call the real-time Web.

In each generation a stack has emerged, and secure messaging has been key to that stack. The names change and the scale of the prize and challenges certainly changes, but the basic issue remains the same: delivering messages reliably and quickly. In this post, we trace the steps from the second generation to the third generation to see how the real-time Web might play out.

Facebook just announced that it has released Tornado, the real-time web framework that powers FriendFeed, as open source code. According to Facebook's David Recordon, Tornado is one of the core infrastructure pieces that power FriendFeed's real-time functionality. The framework, according to Recordon, is similar to other Python frameworks like Google's webapp or web.py, but is faster and able to handle more simultaneous traffic than its competitors. On his personal blog, Bret Taylor, one of the co-founders of FriendFeed, explains the technical details behind Tornado in more detail.

In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup - our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week - we report on and analyze the acquisition of lifestreaming company FriendFeed by Facebook. We also explore a new trend that may route around both companies: distributed social networking. In other news this week: Facebook announced that user updates will be searchable, Google unveiled a faster search infrastructure, Microsoft and Nokia announced a partnership around Office apps, Gartner released its latest Hype Cycle, and social networking statistics were revealed suggesting that younger generations keep track of their online friends better than offline ones. We also check in on our two new channels: ReadWriteEnterprise (devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' trends and products) and ReadWriteStart (dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs).

There's no end of talk about the benefits of the real time web these days, but what's going on behind the scenes? What do the nuts and bolts look like? Is it standards based code on scalable servers? Is it hyper-active little elves?

FriendFeed product manager Dan Hsiao and company intern Ross Miller released a short video today from deep inside the core of that innovative company that Facebook just paid $50m in cash and stocks to purchase. Now that FriendFeed has had its exit, the staff must feel comfortable opening up a little to the world and letting us see what really goes on there.

Maybe it's better to host your own. That's the thinking coming from a growing number of early technology adopters as service after service goes down, sells out or otherwise frustrates the users who have published their content online only to see the tools they use become broken or less desirable.

The prospect of a distributed, interoperable, self-hosted network of publishing, reading and discussion tools is nothing new - but the idea is gaining a lot more support as more people react to recent news like FriendFeed's sale to Facebook, Tr.im's up and down and Twitter's denial of service attacks. The tide may not be turning, but there's sure to be some new waves of innovation that come out of this period of frustration.

In wake of the news of the FriendFeed acquisition by Facebook, we're faced with the real possibility that FriendFeed.com will be shut down for good. According to the press release, "FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being..." In other words, it's only a matter of time before the site is gone for good. What is the FriendFeed community to do?

At one time, FriendFeed clones like Lifestream.fm and Socialthing! looked like promising alternatives, but neither of them offered the same rich and innovative features that FriendFeed does - the very features which made FriendFeed the standout service that it is today. However, there is one service that may have an opportunity to capitalize on the FriendFeed exodus: social media aggregator Streamy.

It's going to be a little like the Brady Bunch, this union between Facebook and the just-acquired social networking service FriendFeed. Both families will influence each other a lot, though Facebook is far, far bigger. (The youngest one in curls!)

FriendFeed was co-founded by Paul Buchheit, the man who invented GMail, and by Bret Taylor, who co-founded Google Maps. They both made enough money from being early Google Employees that they never needed to work again and didn't need to sell to Facebook - but they joined Facebook because they wanted the work they'd done on FriendFeed to change the world of social networking. Here's what they bring to Facebook; it's probably going to change Facebook a lot.

Earlier today, rumors started to appear that FriendFeed had been acquired by Facebook. We now have confirmation that this is indeed true. Neither Facebook nor FriendFeed released any exact details about the acquisition, but we'll keep this story updated as we learn more details about this acquisition. According to a post by Bret Taylor on the FriendFeed blog, FriendFeed will continue to operate normally for the time being while the two companies figure out the long-term plans.

After a short private beta test, JS-Kit just announced that Echo, its new blog commenting platform, is now available as a public beta. Echo aggregates conversations around a blog post from across the Internet and allows users to share their comments on Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed. Echo offers a number of well-designed and unique features, including real-time updating and the ability to capture social gestures related to a blog's content like star ratings and 'likes' from across the Web. In addition, at least for the time being, JS-Kit also offers good spam and obscenity filters.

The future of search almost certainly involves social networks, social graphs, or social filtering in some capacity. Companies will live or die by whether they get the "social" part right: creating the right level of intimacy, trust, reliability, social connectedness, and accuracy in their results listings. Of course, this specifically means that their user experience must at least meet or, preferably, exceed that of Google's.

To achieve this, we must first stop arguing over the different flavors of search.

FriendFeed has recently launched a search feature, and so Facebook search must be coming soon.

Real-time Web search (of streams of activities) is a hot topic right now. Everyone, including Google and Microsoft, recognizes the value of using trusted contacts as filters. What was once called social search is now called real-time search, but this time it will really happen. First, it will be applied to streams and then to the Web in general.

What we are about to get is a Social Relevancy Rank. Whenever you search streams of activity, the results will be ordered not chronologically but by how relevant each is to you based on your social graph. That is, people who matter more to you will bubble up. How does this work? Well, there will be a formula, just as there is a formula for Page Rank.

If you were a little blue bird, with a good pile of money and a whole lot of hype, what would you buy to spice up your nest? There are so many little services being built on top of Twitter that we wouldn't be surprised to see some more of them acquired by the company soon. That would mean more features for everyday users and more usefulness for features loved by loyal early adopters.

Twitter has acquired two other companies so far, that we know of. Search engine and sentiment analysis service Summize became Twitter's own search engine and Values of N sold its assets so engineer Rael Dornfest could be brought into the company. Here are ten other startups we think that Twitter should consider acquiring next. Which kind of company would you most like to see become part of Twitter itself? We've got a poll below.

FriendFeed, the multi-network activity aggregator co-founded by Gmail creator Paul Buchheit, announced today that it has entered the crowded field of real time search. FriendFeed was already the best way to learn what early adopter social media users were saying about any topic across blogs, Twitter, delicious and other diverse social media sites. If FriendFeed wants to step it up to the next level and challenge business-class conversation trackers, we believe there are four steps the company needs to take.

We think that would make a whole lot of sense. In fact we think that if real time search were turned into a business tool it could challenge social media monitoring services like Radian6, Scout Labs and Sysomos. Here's what we think needs to happen in order for that to become a possibility.

Last month, we posed the question "are trolls ruining social media?" - a topic that seems to have reared its ugly head once again over the weekend, this time with a specific focus on FriendFeed and the supposed angry mobs that form there. But let's get real for a minute. Although it's shocking that some FriendFeed users post terrible, hurtful things while using their real names, posting angry and mean comments is nothing new to the internet. Other social communities, including Digg and YouTube, also deal with this issue - heck, they're even known for it!

But instead of continually pointing out the problem, maybe it's time for the innovators in our community to start thinking up solutions. Here's one we just thought up...let us know what you think.

Everyone's Robert Scoble's favorite real-time microblogging service, FriendFeed, is now allowing users to post and download many kinds of files through their site.

Sadly, video files are not on the list of accepted formats. Yet. And users can only upload three MP3s in a 24-hour period. However, other file types, from PSDs to RTFs, are accepted and up- and downloadable.

Today, the folks over at Microblink have launched a new application which allows you to visualize your FriendFeed data or the data belonging to your friends. Called FeedStats, the app displays charts and graphs which show what services are being used, what time you post, and who interacts with your content the most. In short, FeedStats is a lot like the Twitter service TweetStats, but designed just for FriendFeed users.

Paul Buchheit built the first version of Gmail in one day. Then, he built the first prototype of Google's contextual advertising service, Adsense, in one day as well. Now, he's working on a much-watched startup called FriendFeed that he believes just brought to market the next big form of communication online: flowing, multi-person, real-time conversations.

"The open, realtime discussions that occur on FriendFeed," he says, "are going to become a major new communication medium on the same level as email, IM and blogging." That's a pretty ambitious claim, but Buchheit has the credibility to make it.