Will Facebook become the Microsoft of Social Media?

The big news yesterday, taking the tech world by storm, "Facebook Acquires FriendFeed." This news totally trumped the previous technology news when it was announced that bit.ly was interested in acquiring tr.im who were ending their operation of shortening URLs. As Facebook becomes ahead of the Social Media game, nearly killing defeated MySpace in battle and taking FriendFeed's hand in friendship, or marriage for that matter, one has to ask: will Facebook continue to dominate the social media world?

I was introduced to FriendFeed just a few months ago and I admit, I wasn't comprehending the full capabilities of the site. It wasn't until recently that I got chance to use the site and get ultra excited about its effectiveness. See with FriendFeed, or FF, you stay connected with several media outlets and all of your feeds can be embedded into your profile. With FF, I was able to feed my various networks without missing a beat. Everyone of course has their networks set up differently. With mine, I was able to update FF via Youtube, Google Reader, Del.i.cious, and Twitter. With my permissions, FF would update my Google Talk status as well as Twitter and then when the feed hits my Twitter Status, Tweetpo.st (a great tool!) would then in turn post my FF feed to my Facebook. Are you still with me? I hope so.

With this latest acquisition, the game has definitely changed.

Am I upset about this? I can't give you a definite answer. I am definitely concerned about a potential Facebook monopoly. Mind you, unless they have already, Facebook hasn't announced their future plans for FriendFeed. We're not sure whether it will continue to run as a stand alone site or merge with FaceBook's site. I am sincerely hoping though that FaceBook would begin the works of allowing FriendFeed to have a mobile app, preferrably for BlackBerry (in the event that it's stand alone site).

The news is indeed surprising and I doubt anyone saw this coming; I know I didn't. But this indeed gives the rest of the Social World something to be worried about. Facebook has the resources and the power to be a force to be reckoned with. According to reports

What are your thoughts on this latest news? I'd love to hear from you.

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Myspace claims responsibilty for Twitter and Facebook DDOS attack

Early yesterday afternoon, Twitter had issues with connectivity. Twitter members can attest that they were going bonkers when service was down for 2 hours. 2 hours? You're not asleep and you can't send a tweet for 2 hours? Either we're serious addicts or we're just serious addicts. It wasn't until the infamous Mashable blog announced that Twitter and Facebook were under heavy attack by the dreaded DDOS.

So what the heck is a DDOS attack? Well according to Wikipedia, "A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users." In lamens terms, when a site receives a DDOS attack, you, the web surfer, can't surf the attacked site. Pretty ironic seeing that around the same week, we hear reports that Myspace's popularity has dwindled and that their cutting about 30% of its workforce. Bummer. So what better way to stay in the race by stealing the traffic from Twitter and Facebook and give users an alternative. Makes sense right? Let's be honest, of course Myspace wouldn't really take responsibility for the attack, but wouldn't it be funny if disgruntled Myspace employees, including Tom himself, attacked the "pop sites" to make their employment seem useful?

Let's go a little deeper. I'm sure like TV shows, sites at times jump the shark and then they are considered obsolete and unpopular. What was Myspace's reason? Was it when they were sold to News Corp for $327 million? The same parent company to conservative news channel Fox News. Maybe people were just annoyed by Tom; I know I was.

Whatever the case may be, Myspace as reckoning force is over. Users are now finding other ways to connect to people rather than spend time building Myspace pages for people to leave comments. With Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and even Youtube (MySpace's video nemisis) becoming more interactive, Myspace honestly doesn't stand a chance of survival.

In conclusion, applications like TweetDeck, UberTwitter and URL shortner bit.ly may be having API issues with Twitter since the attack, and Twitter itself is staggering like a boxer that gets up at the 9th count before being K.O.'ed. But unless News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch decides to liquidate his asset and sell Myspace to a dominating web powerhouse like Google, these dominant social media outlets will continue to be popular; or will they soon to jump the shark too? Only time will tell...

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