“Friendfeed is not dead. It’s transforming” says Friendfeed Co-Founder

Friendfeed, the nimble social lifestream, was acquired two months ago by social networking giant Facebook and much to the disappointment of Friendfeed’s loyal members, there was no word from the Friendfeed as to its future.

Today, Friendfeed co-founder Paul Buchheit issued a message on the site responding to the great amount of discussion of late regarding Friendfeed’s future.

His words, and I quote:

“There was a lot of chatter about the future of FriendFeed this weekend. The short answer is that the team is working on a couple of longer-term projects that will help bring FriendFeedy goodness to the larger world. Transformation is not the end. Consider this the chrysalis stage — if all goes well, a beautiful butterfly will emerge :)”

Although not crystal clear, it does imply Friendfeed has a future of sorts. Whether part of Facebook (most likely scenario judging by his of words), in its own right or as a completely different beast.

What is fact, is that Friendfeed as a tool and social medium, ranks above virtually every social networking stream based application currently available – yes, including Twitter with lists. To see it essentially fade into a ghost town would be a huge waste, particularly since the site still maintains an incredibly loyal userbase, whose limits have unfortunately been pushed of late. The comments from Buchheit, as long overdue as they may be, are an extremely welcome note of assurance that the management – and new Facebook employees –  have not forgotten about its faithful users.