SYDNEY: Facebook is shutting down the News Feed like social network it acquired back in 2009, according to a blog post. Friend Feed, which lets users share links, photos or posts in a “customized feed” will officially shut down on April 9.
The statement Facebook gave to Re/code, “We’ve been maintaining the service for the last five years, but usage has been declining steadily and the community is now just a fraction of what it once was. Given this, we’ve decided that it’s time to start winding things down. Our thanks go out to the Friend Feed community for its many years of support.”
For the group of people who still use Friend Feed, posts, messages and photos will be available for the next month, and then they’ll disappear altogether.
For some perspective on how the social media landscape has changed over the past five years: The Friend Feed acquisition was considered a big deal at the time, and co-founder Bret Taylor became Facebook’s CTO. The acquisition was a reported $50 million deal. Facebook bought WhatsApp last year for $19 billion. Facebook had 250 million users at the time of the acquisition; it now has nearly 1.4 billion.
