Facebook has acquired rival social net FriendFeed for around $50 million, including at least $15 million in cash, according to the Wall Street Journal.  FriendFeed’s social sharing system allows users to share links and their web-wide activity updates on one centralized page: think Facebook’s feed updates, but with a much wider net. While FriendFeed never enjoyed the stratospheric growth of Facebook, it gained a following with tech users and found quite a few of its features emulated by its more popular rival.

So what’s next for FriendFeed after the acquisition? While FriendFeed will continue to operate as a separate product for a while, the company’s co-founder Bret Taylor admitted “We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team.” It would seem some type of product or feature integration is likely.

Business Insider's Dan Frommer considers the deal mainly a “talent buy.” FriendFeed’s staff of 12— including 11 engineers-- includes the innovators behind Gmail and GoogleMaps. If you’re going to buy brains, this was a good team to target. Call me bear-ish, but $50 million seems a lot of money to pay for any brain in this market.

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington agrees with Frommer, saying “the deal is largely a talent acquisition by Facebook, and less about the Friendfeed product.”  Arrington added, “Facebook is clearly excited about Friendfeed’s ability to innovate and launch new products.”  Source: Wall Street Journal, more and Business Insider, more, and TechCrunch, more