Facebook Inc. said it has acquired FriendFeed, a start-up that allow users to share links and status updates online, folding in a potential rival that struggled to take off.

Financial details of the deal were not announced, but all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and senior executive at FriendFeed will join Facebook's engineering and product teams, Facebook said in a release.

As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle, FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor wrote in a blog post.

FriendFeed was founded in 2007 by four high-profile former Google Inc. software engineers, as a way for users to share links and updates across social media service--like Facebook and Twitter--at the same time.

However, it was never able to expand far beyond a core group of Internet professionals, particularly as other services like Facebook made it easier for users to update multiple services at once.

The two companies did not offer plans on how they plan to blend the products and whether it plans to continue operating FriendFeed as an independent site.

We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team, Taylor wrote, urging users to watch the FriendFeed News group for updates.

The acquisition comes after Facebook last year failed to acquire Twitter Inc.--a microblogging service which, like FriendFeed, allows users to share links and content online.

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