Dear Facebook, you have been busy this week.

To recap, first they announced their acquisition of FriendFeed. If you haven't heard of it, FriendFeed is the real-time aggregator that lets you gather info from around the web (think Tweets, social network stuff, blogs and your original discussion threads too), and create your own feeds to share with mates.

Swiftly after that, Facebook popped out the launch of their real-time search. They say it will trawl through the last 30 days of news feed activity (for photos, status updates, links, videos, etc), plus public profiles and fan pages, to give you the most up-to-date, and presumably more relevant, results.

This is interesting for a whole host of reasons. By teaming with FriendFeed, who already have a powerful real-time search themselves, Facebook have aimed an explosive shot over the bows at Twitter.

For some time the two companies have engaged in polite fisticuffs for the top 'social media' spot. By acquiring FriendFeed, which generates more conversation, Facebook have revealed their intentions to go after a hot slice of the discussion pie. Of course, the irony is that right now, Tweeting about Facebook and FriendFeed is rife. It speaks volumes about Twitter's seemingly unassailable position as the first choice for breaking news and conversation. No wonder Facebook want to chase them down.

Food for thought, but let's go back to that Facebook/Twitter rivalry. The third momentous piece of news this week is the impending arrival of 'Facebook Lite'. Designed to be a stripped back version of the current Facebook service, the (official) intention is to allow people in countries with very slow broadband speeds – like India, China and Russia - the opportunity to network like the rest of us. It's not a million miles away from the mobile version of Facebook that we use now and it's simple bare-essentials look will surely lend itself even better to access on a handset.

So far, so plausible. But thanks to Mashable, we've looked at screenshots of Facebook Lite and call us crazy, but it looks a lot like Twitter to us. Whether this is the intention is beside the point; this simply looks like the complete hat trick of gauntlets thrown down for Twitter's benefit.

So. The question is, what will the impact of this be for us all? At The Feed we're excited by the implicit promise of a richer online landscape. New ways to search the web via desktop, laptop or mobile; creation of content; sharing and discussing it with friends and strangers alike; surely that's what it's all about?

Tell us what you think in the comments, we’d love to hear.