TECHCRUNCH
MICHAEL ARRINGTON
18 MARCH 08
FriendFeed, a service that aggregates social network information, just launched
quite a nice little search feature. Users can search by individual, friends, or all users, and specify the search only to specific services like Twitter or Delicious. A basic search box is on every page. Advanced search is here.
FriendFeed is clearly more than a simple service to aggregate lots of data from other websites and then access it via RSS. Users can comment directly on posted items (and do so frequently). Now they can search, too. More and more FriendFeed is looking like a destination site built on the back of all that third party data.
That’s smart of them, and it’s something we’ve seen in the past. The most recent example is Meebo, which began as a way for users to access instant messaging services like Yahoo, AIM, GTalk and MSN on the web. But eventually they started allowing users to create their own accounts, and then launched their own proprietary chat service as well. Meebo has always said that isn’t a big part of their overall strategy, but I notice that most of my chats on Meebo are now done via their service, not one of the big IM players.