List of mergers and acquisitions by Facebook
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Facebook is a social networking company that has acquired more than 50 companies, including WhatsApp. The WhatsApp acquisition closed at a steep $19 billion; more than $40 per user of the platform. Facebook also purchased the defunct company ConnectU in a court settlement and acquired intellectual property formerly held by rival Friendster. The majority of the companies acquired by Facebook are based in the United States, and in turn, a large percentage of these companies are based in or around the San Francisco Bay Area. Facebook has also made investments in LuckyCal and Wildfire Interactive.
Most of Facebook's acquisitions have been 'talent acquisitions' and acquired products are often shut-down. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that "We have not once bought a company for the company. We buy companies to get excellent people... In order to have a really entrepreneurial culture one of the key things is to make sure we're recruiting the best people. One of the ways to do this is to focus on acquiring great companies with great founders."[1] The Instagram acquisition, announced on 2012-04-09, appears to be the first exception to this pattern.[2]
Acquisitions
# | Acquisition date | Company | Business | Location | Value (USD) | Related to | Used as / Integrated with | Talent acquired | Refs | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | August 23, 2005 | facebook.com domain name | AboutFace | USA, Boston, Massachusetts | $200,000 | — | name change from Thefacebook.com | — | [3][4] | |
2 | July 19, 2007 | Parakey | Offline applications/Web desktop | USA, Mountain View, California | Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital | Facebook Mobile | Blake Ross, Joe Hewitt | [5] | ||
3 | June 23, 2008 | ConnectU | Social networking | USA, Cambridge, Massachusetts | $31,000,000 | i2Hub | (Court settlement) | None | [6][7] | |
4 | August 10, 2009 | FriendFeed | Social networking aggregator | USA, Mountain View, California | $47,500,000 | Benchmark Capital, ex-Google | Paul Buchheit, Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Sanjeev Singh, 8 others | [8] | ||
5 | February 19, 2010 | Octazen | Contact importer | Malaysia, Taman Melawati, Kuala Lumpur | FriendFinder | 2 engineers (remote workers) | [9] | |||
6 | March 2, 2010 | Divvyshot | Photo management | USA, San Francisco, California | Y Combinator, AngelList | Facebook Photos | Sam Odio, Paul Carduner | [10] | ||
7 | May 13, 2010 | Friendster patents | Intellectual property/patents | USA, Mountain View, California / Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur | $40,000,000 | None | [11] | |||
8 | May 26, 2010 | ShareGrove | Private conversations/Forums | USA, San Mateo, California | Elm Street Ventures | Facebook Groups | Kent Libbey, Adam Wolff | [12] | ||
9 | July 8, 2010 | Nextstop | Travel recommendations | USA, San Francisco, California | $2,500,000 | ex-Google | Charles Lin, Carl Sjogreen, Adrian Graham | [13] | ||
10 | August 15, 2010 | Chai Labs | Internet applications | USA, Mountain View, California | $10,000,000 | Merus Capital, ex-Google | Gokul Rajaram, Giri Rajaram, others | [14] | ||
11 | August 20, 2010 | Hot Potato | Check-ins/status updates | USA, Brooklyn, New York | ~$10,000,000 | RRE Ventures | Facebook Places | Saadiq Rodgers-King, Justin Shaffer, 6 others | [15] | |
12 | October 29, 2010 | Drop.io | File hosting and sharing | USA, Dumbo, Brooklyn, New York | ~$10,000,000 | RRE Ventures | Sam Lessin | [16] | ||
13 | November 15, 2010 | FB.com domain name | American Farm Bureau Federation | USA, Washington, D.C. | $8,500,000 | — | — | — | [17] | |
14 | January 25, 2011 | Rel8tion | Mobile advertising | USA, Seattle, Washington | undisclosed | Peter Wilson | [18] | |||
15 | March 2, 2011 | Beluga | Group messaging | USA, Palo Alto, California | undisclosed | Facebook Messenger | Jonathan Perlow, Lucy Zhang, Ben Davenport | [19] | ||
16 | March 20, 2011 | Snaptu | Mobile app developer | UK, London, England | $70,000,000 | Mobile | [20] | |||
17 | March 24, 2011 | RecRec | Computer vision | USA, San Francisco, California | undisclosed | Dogpatch Labs | [21] | |||
18 | April 27, 2011 | DayTum | Information graphics | USA, SoHo, New York City | Nicholas Felton, Ryan Case | [22] | ||||
19 | June 9, 2011 | Sofa | Software design | Netherlands, Amsterdam | Koen Bok, Dirk Stoop, Jasper Hauser, Hugo van Heuven, Jorn van Dijk | [23] | ||||
20 | June 9, 2011 | MailRank | Email prioritization | USA, New York, New York | Bryan O’Sullivan and Bethanye McKinney Blount | [24] | ||||
21 | August 2, 2011 | Push Pop Press | Digital publishing | USA, San Francisco, California | undisclosed | Co-founders Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris | [25][26][27] | |||
22 | October 10, 2011 | Friend.ly | Social casual Q&A service app | USA, Mountain View, California | undisclosed | [28][29][30] | ||||
23 | November 8, 2011 | Strobe | HTML5 mobile apps, SproutCore | USA, San Francisco, California | undisclosed | Mobile engineering team | Founder and CEO Charles Jolley, other Strobe employees | [31][32] | ||
24 | December 2, 2011 | Gowalla | Location Based Service | USA, Austin, Texas | ||||||
25 | February 20, 2012 | Caffeinatedmind | In-browser file transfer | USA, California | ||||||
26 | April 9, 2012 | Photo sharing | USA, San Francisco, California | $1,000,000,000 | ||||||
27 | April 13, 2012 | Tagtile | Customer loyalty app | USA, San Francisco, California | undisclosed | Tagtile's founders | [33][34] | |||
28 | May 5, 2012 | Glancee | Social discovery platform | USA, San Francisco, California | undisclosed | Three co-founders | [35][36] | |||
29 | May 15, 2012 | Lightbox.com | Photo sharing | UK, London, England | undisclosed | Thai Tran, Nilesh Patel, Five employees | [37] | |||
30 | May 21, 2012 | Karma | Social gifting | USA, San Francisco, California | undisclosed | Facebook Gifts | Lee Linden, Ben Lewis | [38] | ||
31 | June 18, 2012 | Face.com | Face recognition platform | Israel, Tel Aviv | $100,000,000 | [39][40] | ||||
32 | July 14, 2012 | Spool | Mobile bookmarking and sharing content | USA, San Francisco, California | undisclosed | Mobile engineering team | Avichal Garg, Curtis Spencer, Six employees | [41] | ||
33 | July 20, 2012 | Acrylic Software | RSS app Pulp and secure database app Wallet | Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia | undisclosed | Facebook's design team | Two employees | [42] | ||
34 | August 24, 2012 | Threadsy | Threadsy is a social aggregator, Maker of social marketing tool Swaylo | USA, San Francisco, California | undisclosed | [43] | ||||
35 | February 28, 2013 | Atlas Solutions | Atlas advertiser suite | USA, Seattle, Washington | less than $100,000,000 | [44] | ||||
36 | March 2013 | osmeta | Mobile software | USA, Mountain View, CA | 17 engineers | [45] | ||||
37 | March 14, 2013 | Hot Studio | Design agency | USA, New York, New York, San Francisco, California | [46] | |||||
38 | April 23, 2013 | Spaceport | Cross-platform game framework | USA, Burlingame, California | [47] | |||||
39 | April 25, 2013 | Parse | Mobile app backends | USA, San Francisco, California | $85,000,000 | [48] | ||||
40 | July 18, 2013 | Monoidics | Automatic verification software | UK, London, England | [49] | |||||
41 | August 12, 2013 | Jibbigo | Speech translation app | USA, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | [50] | |||||
42 | October 13, 2013 | Onavo | Mobile analytics and Israel Facebook Headquarters Office | Israel, Tel Aviv | [51] | |||||
43 | December 17, 2013 | SportStream | Sports conversation analysis | USA, San Francisco, California | [52] | |||||
44 | January 8, 2014 | Little Eye Labs | Performance analysis and monitoring tools for Android | India, Bengaluru, India | $15,000,000[53] | [54] | ||||
45 | January 13, 2014 | Branch | Web conversation platform | USA, New York, New York | $15,000,000 | [55] | ||||
46 | February 19, 2014 | Mobile instant messaging | USA, Mountain View, California | $19,000,000,000 | Co-founder and CEO Jan Koum | [56] | ||||
47 | March 25, 2014 | Oculus VR | Virtual reality technology | USA, Irvine, California | $2,000,000,000 | Co-founders Palmer Luckey and Brendan Iribe, Engineer Chris Dycus, and CTO John D. Carmack | [57][58] | |||
48 | March 27, 2014 | Ascenta | High-altitude UAVs | UK, Somerset, England | $20,000,000 | [59] | ||||
49 | April 24, 2014 | ProtoGeo Oy | Fitness tracking app Moves | Finland, Helsinki | undisclosed | [60] | ||||
50 | August 7, 2014 | PrivateCore | Secure Server Technology | USA, Palo Alto, California | undisclosed | [61] | ||||
51 | August 14, 2014 | LiveRail | Publisher Monetization Platform | USA, San Francisco, California | $400,000,000-$500,000,000 | [62] | ||||
52 | August 26, 2014 | WaveGroup Sound | Sound Studio | USA, Burlingame, California | undisclosed | [63] | ||||
53 | January 6, 2015 | Wit.ai | Speech recognition | USA, Palo Alto, California | undisclosed | [64] | ||||
54 | January 8, 2015 | Quickfire Networks | Video Compression | USA, San Diego, California | undisclosed | [65][66] | ||||
55 | March 14, 2015 | TheFind, Inc. | Ecommerce | USA, Mountain View, California | undisclosed | [67] | ||||
56 | May 26, 2015 | Surreal Vision | Computer vision, augmented reality | UK, London, England | undisclosed | [68] | ||||
57 | July 16, 2015 | Pebbles | Computer vision, augmented reality | Israel, Kfar Saba | $60,000,000 | [69] | ||||
58 | March 9, 2016 | MSQRD (Masquerade) | Visual effects (Face-swapping) | Belarus, Minsk | undisclosed | CEO, Eugene Nevgen, Sergey Gonchar, Eugene Zatepyakin (co-founders) | [70][71] | |||
59 | May 23, 2016 | Two Big Ears | Spatial Audio | UK, Scotland | undisclosed | [72] | ||||
60 | October 10, 2016 | Infiniled | Oculus VR | Ireland, Cork | undisclosed | |||||
61 | November 16, 2016 | Faciometrics | Computer Vision, Machine Learning | USA, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | undisclosed | Carnegie Mellon University | Fernando De la Torre | [73] |
See also
- List of mergers and acquisitions by Apple
- List of mergers and acquisitions by Google
- List of mergers and acquisitions by Microsoft
- List of mergers and acquisitions by Twitter
- List of mergers and acquisitions by Yahoo!
- Mergers and acquisitions
References
- ↑ "Why Facebook buys startups". Retrieved 2010-10-30.
- ↑ "Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion". Retrieved 2012-04-04.
- ↑ Williams, Chris (October 1, 2007). "Facebook wins Manx battle for face-book.com". The Register. London. Retrieved June 13, 2008.|
- ↑ "thefacebook.com becomes facebook.com for $200,000". Timeline of Facebook.com. Xtimeline.com. August 23, 2005.
- ↑ "Facebook buys Parakey". Gigaom. 2007-07-19. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
- ↑ "Judge Blocks Rival's Effort to Learn Value of Facebook's Stock". New York Law Journal. 2010-03-17. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
- ↑ "The AP Reveals Details of Facebook/ConnectU Settlement With Greatest Hack Ever". TechCrunch. 2009-02-11. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
- ↑ "Facebook Acquires FriendFeed". TechCrunch. 2009-08-10. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
- ↑ "Octazen: What The Heck Did Facebook Just Buy Exactly, And Why?". TechCrunch. 2010-02-19. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
- ↑ "Facebook Buys Up Divvyshot To Make Facebook Photos Even Better". TechCrunch. 2010-04-02. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
- ↑ "Facebook buys friendster patents for 40m". GigaOm. 2010-08-04. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
- ↑ "Facebook Acquires ShareGrove". Mashable. 2010-05-26. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
- ↑ "Facebook acquires social travel-recommendation site Nextstop". TechCrunch. 2010-07-08. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
- ↑ "Facebook Acquires Chai Labs, Gains 'Godfather of Google Adsense'". PCMag. 2010-08-15. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
- ↑ "Facebook acquires Hot Potato". Mashable. 2010-08-20. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
- ↑ "Facebook Acquires Drop.io, Nabs Sam Lessin". TechCrunch. 2010-10-29. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
- ↑ "FB.com acquired by Facebook". NameMon News. January 11, 2011.
- ↑ "Facebook Acquires Mobile Advertising Company Out of Stealth Mode". AllThingsD. 2011-01-25. Retrieved 2011-01-25.
- ↑ "Facebook Acquires Group Messaging Service Beluga In A Talent AND Technology Deal". TechCrunch. 2011-03-01. Retrieved 2011-03-01.
- ↑ "Confirmed: Facebook Acquires Snaptu (For An Estimated $60 – $70 Million)". TechCrunch. 2011-03-20. Retrieved 2011-03-20.
- ↑ http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/27/facebook-acq-hires-daytum/
- ↑ "Daytum's Dataviz Wizards, Nick Felton and Ryan Case, Join Facebook". DesignTaxi. 2011-04-27. Retrieved 2011-04-27.
- ↑ "Facebook Buys Sofa, A Software Design Team That Will Help Make Facebook More Beautiful". TechCrunch. 2011-06-09. Retrieved 2011-06-09.
- ↑ "Facebook buys e-mail prioritiser MailRank". FirstPost. 2011-11-16. Retrieved 2011-11-16.
- ↑ Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris (2 August 2011). "Push Pop Press acquired by Facebook". Push Pop Pres. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
- ↑ Reisinger, Don (2 August 2011). "Facebook buys digital bookmaker Push Pop Press". CNET. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
- ↑ Olivarez-Giles, Nathan (2 August 2011). "Facebook buys iPad book maker Push Pop Press [Updated]". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
- ↑ Protalinski, Emil (11 October 2011). "Facebook acquires Q&A service Friend.ly". ZDNet. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
- ↑ Gaudin, Sharon (10 October 2011). "Facebook acquires start-up friend.ly". Computerworld. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
- ↑ Hernandez, Barbara E. (13 October 2011). "Facebook Acquires Startup Friend.ly". NBC Bay Area. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
- ↑ Wauters, Robin (8 November 2011). "Facebook Acquires Team Behind HTML5 App Platform Strobe; SproutCore Lives On". TechCrunch. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
- ↑ Oreskovic, Alexi (8 November 2011). "Facebook hires mobile tech developer team". Reuters. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
- ↑ MacMillan, Douglas (14 April 2012). "Facebook Acquires Team Behind Customer-Loyalty App Tagtile". Bloomberg News. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
- ↑ The Tagtile Team (12 April 2012). "We are joining Facebook!". Tagtile. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
- ↑ Protalinski, Emil (5 May 2012). "Facebook acquires location-based social discovery startup Glancee". ZDNet. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
- ↑ DesMarais, Christina (5 May 2012). "Facebook Acquisition Points to Future of More Phone Tracking". PCWorld. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
- ↑ "Facebook Hires Team From Android Photosharing App Dev Lightbox To Quiet Mobile Fears".
- ↑ "Facebook stumbles, buys startup Karma".
- ↑ Levy, Ari (19 June 2012). "Facebook acquires Face.com — stock up 4.7 percent". San Francisco Gate. Retrieved 19 June 2012.
- ↑ Gil (18 June 2012). "Awesome News – Facebook Acquires Face.com". Face.com. Retrieved 19 June 2012.
- ↑ "Facebook acquires mobile-bookmarking service Spool". CNET. 14 July 2012.
- ↑ "Facebook acquires Mac, iOS developer Acrylic Software". CNET. 20 July 2012.
- ↑ "Facebook Acquires Threadsy, Maker of Social Marketing Tool Swaylo". Techcrunch. 24 August 2012.
- ↑ "Facebook Confirms It Will Acquire Atlas Advertiser Suite From Microsoft To Close The Ad Spend Loop". Techcrunch. 28 February 2013.
- ↑ "Confirmed: Facebook Has Acquired Osmeta, A Stealth Mobile Software Startup". "TechCrunch". 10 April 2013.
- ↑ "Welcoming the Talented Team Behind Hot Studio". "Facebook". 29 March 2013.
- ↑ "Facebook Acqhires Team From HTML5 Game Platform Spaceport.io, Which Will Keep Running". "TechCrunch". 23 April 2013.
- ↑ "Welcoming Parse to Facebook". "Facebook". 25 April 2013.
- ↑ "Facebook to Acquire Monoidics' Assets!". "Monoidics". 18 July 2013.
- ↑ "Facebook Acquires "Mobile Technologies", Developer Of Speech Translation App Jibbigo". "TechCrunch". 12 August 2013.
- ↑ "Facebook Buys Mobile Data Analytics Company Onavo, Reportedly For Up To $200M... And (Finally?) Gets Its Office In Israel". "TechCrunch". 14 October 2013.
- ↑ "Sporty Facebook acquires a San Francisco-based startup". Woolor. 17 December 2013.
- ↑ "Indian Startup Little Eye Labs Confirms Its Acquisition By Facebook, Deal Worth $10-$15M". TechCrunch. 7 January 2014. Retrieved 26 March 2014.
- ↑ "It's Official, Bengaluru Based Little Eye Labs Acquired by Facebook". NextBigWhat. 8 January 2013.
- ↑ "Facebook Acquires Branch Media Team To Lead New "Conversations" Group". TechCrunch. 13 January 2013.
- ↑ "Facebook to Acquire WhatsApp". Facebook. 19 February 2014.
- ↑ "Facebook acquires Oculus VR". Facebook. 25 March 2014.
- ↑ King, Rachael (25 March 2014). "Facebook's latest multi-billion buy: 3D gaming company Oculus" (blog). Between the Lines. United States: ZDNet. Archived from the original on 25 March 2014.
- ↑ "Facebook to Acquire Ascenta". Facebook. 27 March 2014.
- ↑ Albergott, Reed (April 24, 2014). "With App Acquisition, Facebook Enters Fitness Tracking Market". Digits. The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on April 25, 2014. Retrieved April 25, 2014.
- ↑ Perez, Sarah (August 7, 2014). "Facebook Buys Secure Server Technology Provider PrivateCore". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
- ↑ Constine, Josh (August 14, 2014). "Facebook's $400M-$500M Acquisition Of Video Ad Tech Startup LiveRail Is Now Official". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 24, 2015.
- ↑ "Facebook Acquires A Sound Studio To Help Power Its App Factory". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 26, 2014.
- ↑ "Facebook acquires speech recognition startup Wit.ai". The Next Web. January 5, 2015. Retrieved January 6, 2015.
- ↑ "Facebook Acquires QuickFire Networks, A 'Pied Piper' For Video". TechCrunch. January 8, 2015. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
- ↑ "QuickFire Networks | CrunchBase". www.crunchbase.com. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
- ↑ "Facebook Buys And Shuts Down Shopping Site TheFind To Boost Commerce In Ads". TechCrunch. March 13, 2015. Retrieved March 13, 2015.
- ↑ "Oculus acquires 3D mapping company Surreal Vision to turn reality into a video game". The Verge. Retrieved 27 May 2015.
- ↑ "Facebook's Oculus to Pay About $60 Million for Gesture-Control Firm Pebbles". Wall Street Journal. July 16, 2015. Retrieved July 16, 2015.
- ↑ "Facebook acquires video filter app Msqrd". Wall Street Journal. March 9, 2016. Retrieved March 9, 2016.
- ↑ Khrennikov, Ilya. "Leonardo DiCaprio Helped Make This Belarusian App Go Viral". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2016-06-03.
- ↑ "Two Big Ears". www.twobigears.com. Retrieved 2016-05-23.
- ↑ "Facebook acquires facial recognition startup Faciometrics". TECHCiRCLE. November 17, 2016. Retrieved November 17, 2016.