FriendFeed, a social networking service incubated out of Benchmark Capital, has raised a $5 million first round from the VC firm and its founders Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh. The company offers a service similar to Facebook’s news feed, allowing friends to monitor each other’s activity across an array of social networking sites, like Flickr or Twitter. In addition to just monitoring activity, the service also pitches itself as a content discovery service. First launched by former Google (NSDQ: GOOG) employees last year, the service is launching to the public today. Release.

• Benchmark-Incubated Social Networking Service FriendFeed Launches