The Ayatollah of Social Networking – Facebook is spreading its wing further by gobbling up smaller companies. It seems to be following Google’s path who has had a tradition eating up small, efficient companies and launching breakthrough products using these newly acquired division. In the latest takeover, Snaptu, the Israeli startup behind one of the most used social networking platform for Java based devices has been lapped up by Facebook.
Facebook has been in talks with Snaptu for the past six months and they have struck a deal finally. The financials of the deal are still not known but this will be Facebook’s third major acquisition after the company bought out Rel8tion and Beluga – both messaging companies.
Facebook seems to be interested in the vast number of java ready, internet enabled feature phones that are out there. While most of the world talks about smartphones and platforms, the fact remains that feature phones continue to dominate overall sales. Facebook realizes that this is an entirely untapped market at their disposal and seems to be gearing up to bring the next 500 million users out there who are yet to “be” on Facebook.
Facebook’s takeover is expected to be finalised before the end of April.
