Facebook bought life aggregator and community site FriendFeed on Monday for a deal reportedly worth $50 million. The figure would come from $15 million in cash, and the rest in Facebook stock that vests over several years worth nearly $32.5 million.

Facebook had previously eyed purchasing the start-up as far back as 2007. This deal also comes after an acquisition attempt of Twitter which had fallen through previously.

For its part, Facebook now gets a growing community site in FriendFeed with a full development team at just the right time.

The integration possibilities for Facebook and their some 250 million users also means they bring in some Twitter-like features as well. During Facebook's redesign, it tried incorporating an update stream similar to what Twitter uses in an attempt to get people to spend more time there.

Instead, Twitter has seen steady growth in the number of its users. While the number of people on FriendFeed is a fraction of Facebook's, it has two main benefits.

The first is that it allows integration between several popular social networking sites, including Twitter.

Secondly, it allows users to continue a conversation that starts on Twitter, yet can expand thanks to FriendFeed's threaded comment approach. This gives people a chance to leave longer comments than they could ever do with Twitter's 140 character limit.

Users can also publish their Twitter stream to either FriendFeed or Facebook. It's likely that Facebook will see improved integration between its community and Twitter users via FriendFeed's more open interface.