FriendFeed was shut down on April 9, 2015. We maintained the service since we joined Facebook in 2009, but the number of people using FriendFeed had been steadily declining and in the end, the community was just a fraction of what it once was. Given this, we decided that it was time to start winding things down.

We want to thank you all for being such a terrific and enthusiastic community. We're proud of what we built so many years ago, and we recognize that it would have never been possible without your support.

- The FriendFeed team

Dear FriendFeed community,

We wanted to let you know that FriendFeed will be shutting down soon. We've been maintaining the service since we joined Facebook five years ago, but the number of people using FriendFeed has been steadily declining 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.

Beginning today, we will no longer accept new signups. You will be able to view your posts, messages, and photos until April 9th. On April 9th, we'll be shutting down FriendFeed and it will no longer be available.

We want to thank you all for being such a terrific and enthusiastic community. We're proud of what we built so many years ago, and we recognize that it would have never been possible without your support.

- The FriendFeed team

Custom FriendFeed themes and a way to show them off

When we launched FriendFeed themes we mentioned some improvements we wanted to make, and here they are!

Choose how people see your FriendFeed profile

Starting today, people who visit your profile will see it in the theme you've chosen. If you'd prefer visitors not to see your theme, you can turn it off on your settings page. You can also choose themes for the groups that you're an admin for (looks like the So You Think You Can Dance admin wasted no time!).

If you'd rather not see other people's profiles, you can make that selection in your settings page.

Create your own themes

Of course, we know a lot of users were looking for even more ways to express themselves, so we've added an option that lets you create a custom theme by uploading a background image and choosing a few colors. We want to add more options in the future, but hopefully, this will give you some ideas for where to get started.

As always, let us know of any problems in the feedback group and show us your stuff in the themes group.

FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request

We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle...

The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team. We've always been great admirers of Facebook, and our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we've developed at FriendFeed to Facebook's 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook's passionate engineers to create even more ways for you to easily share with your friends online.

What does this mean for my FriendFeed account?

FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally. We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team. As usual, we will communicate openly about our plans as they develop — keep an eye on the FriendFeed News group for updates.

What about the FriendFeed API?

The FriendFeed API will also continue to operate normally. As above, we will let you know as we settle on our plan to more fully integrate with Facebook.

Check out the official press release for more information.

FriendFeed API v2: Out of beta, OAuth for installed applications

Two weeks ago, we launched version 2 of the FriendFeed API in beta. Since then, we've watched how developers have been using the API and collected a lot of their feedback. We've implemented some changes, and now, we're ready to remove the beta label!

In addition to removing the beta label, we also added support for using OAuth in applications installed on a user's desktop or device. The way it works is similar to Google's ClientLogin for Installed Applications; read all about it in our API documentation.

During the beta period, a number of developers took advantage of the new API to develop nifty applications. Some of the ones we found most interesting include:

• f2p: A FriendFeed mobile interface built by Hiroshi Nakamura.
• FriendBoo: Post audio updates to your FriendFeed from your phone. Created by Paul Kinlan.
• FriendFoo: A real-time FriendFeed interface by YungSang.
• PHP and Java libraries built by Nikolai Kordulla and Sean Sullivan respectively.

And more are on the way! If you have feedback or thoughts on our API, let us know in the FriendFeed API group and be sure to join the developer mailing list.

Ben Darnell joins FriendFeed: Ben++!

We're very excited to have Ben Darnell joining the FriendFeed team starting today! Not only is Ben our newest employee, he's our first new employee in over a year!

I had the honor of working with Ben on the Google Reader team and I'm thrilled to have him bring his ninja-fu data-storage and scalability skills to FriendFeed.

Of course, now that we've hit 13 employees we're beginning to face the inevitable 'big company' problems. With the addition of Ben Darnell to the team already populated with the illustrious Ben Golub, we've now encountered the 'Two-Bens' conundrum.

Welcome, Ben Darnell, to the FriendFeed Family!

Improve FriendFeed for your friends by recommending subscriptions

As a devoted FriendFeed user, I have tried to convince all of my friends and family to join the site, but a handful of them never quite got their accounts set up properly. With our new Recommend friends feature, I can fix their FriendFeed experience by recommending subscriptions to them.

Visit http://friendfeed.com/friends/recommend, and you can recommend subscriptions to any of your friends. I found out my dad wasn't subscribed to a number of our family members, so I sent him ten recommendations:

When you send friend recommendations, your friend will get an email with all of your recommendations, including a link to subscribe to all your recommendations with a single click. (This is the best part for me — it lets me do all the work for my dad, and he just needs to click a single link to get his account in good shape).

You will also find "Recommend friends" links in the popup bubbles that appear when you hover over someone's name:

And you will see them on profile pages of your friends who joined the site recently:

You can currently only recommend friends to people who are also subscribed back to you. Let us know what you think in the FriendFeed Feedback group.