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.

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.

via Conversation Agent