Facebook has purchased social networking and sharing service FriendFeed.

Facebook and FriendFeed announced the deal late yesterday, stating that the companies share a common vision of helping people share information online.

Some of you may not have heard of FriendFeed. Having never really garnered mainstream popularity, most Facebook users will not have any idea what it is. FriendFeed aggregates content. Aside from allowing you to share links, photos and interesting videos you find around the web, you can link your FriendFeed to a number of other accounts so that when you update your Twitter, vote for something on Digg, or add a photo to your Flickr, it automatically shows up in your feed. Your friends can then comment and discuss the links and updates that appear in your feed in a real-time discussion.

So what does Facebook want with FriendFeed? Well, for one thing, its real-time search function. Ever since Twitter took off, Facebook has had its sights set on real-time search, and with its $50 million acquisition of FriendFeed, the company gained that all-important feature. Shortly after announcing the acquisition, the company unveiled its new search tool, which allows users to search the last 30 days of status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by their friends along with the Facebook Pages of which they are a fan and people who have chosen to make their profiles public.

It's not completely clear how Facebook and FriendFeed plan to integrate their products but FriendFeed has said that the site will continue to operate online "for the time being." In a blog post announcing the acquisition, the co-founder Bret Taylor said, "We're still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team."

Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Paul Buchheit, and Sanjeev Singh founded FriendFeed in 2007. Prior to this venture, the four had worked together at Google developing things like Gmail, Google Maps and the company's "Don't be evil" slogan. Facebook is said to have paid nearly $50 million for the company, in a combination cash and stock offer. The WSJ reports that Facebook paid roughly $15 million in cash with the rest in Facebook stock that vests over several years and would be worth roughly $32.5 million.