Facebook on Tuesday acquired Beluga, a group messaging start-up for mobile phones.
In a letter on Beluga’s Web site, the company’s co-founders said the acquisition by Facebook would not affect the service and the team of three developers who built Beluga were “excited to continue to build our vision for mobile group messaging as part of the Facebook team.”
The letter also hinted that Facebook had no plans to shut down the service, saying, “Beluga and Facebook are committed to create new and better ways to communicate and share group experiences.”
In the past, Facebook has acquired start-ups to take advantage of a company’s developer talent, rather than the actual product the company has created.
Beluga is one of a series of group chat services that allow people to communicate over SMS. Another company that offers a similar service is GroupMe, which recently raised over $10 million in financing.
The acquisition of Beluga is another in a series of small start-ups Facebook has purchased over the past year to help expand its platform, specifically focusing on mobile services. Other acquisitions include Drop.io, an online storage service, and Hot Potato, which was also a mobile messaging service. Both products have since been shut down, and are being integrated into the Facebook platform.
MG Siegler of the blog Tech Crunch, who first reported news of the acquisition, said one reason Facebook purchased Beluga was to hire the company’s three co-founders, who are all ex-Google employees.
Source: bits.blogs.nytimes.com. See more...
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