Facebook is making a play for a piece of the small butmuch-buzzed-about group text messaging market. On Tuesday, it announced that it has acquired eight-month-old Beluga.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The move gives Facebook both the Beluga service and, more significantly, the engineering team behind it. Beluga has a small but skilled staff of three, all of whom are former Google employees. Based in Palo Alto, Calif., the company is located just a few miles away from Facebook's new Menlo Park headquarters.
In an article on cnn.com the social network giant Facebook is looking to expand the way you use it. The Beluga service that Facebook is acquiring allows for group texting, this allows for multiple texts to be sent to multiple people. With this new service I think Facebook is looking to continue to expand upon their mobile front. Does the Beluga service allow for Facebook to become an even bigger entity on the mobile market? With Facebook looking to become a worldwide juggernaut in social networking, can we expect to see it expand and create more jobs due its growth?
8 comments:
Why would Facebook acquire this company? Isn’t the concept of the “wall” page like a multi-texting application? Why and where do you think they are going with this purchase?
Facebook is constantly looking for new ways to expand. This new purchase is possibly the new expansion of Facebook because of what the former Google workers can submit to Facebook. Facebook was supposed to be a form of communication and that is what it achieves, it doesn't need to get all technological.
I really like your argument; I think it is well worded and informative. Although, I have some questions: So you believe that it is simply a waste of time to sue one company over possible patent infringements? Do you have any possible alternatives for how these disputes could be settled outside of court? I think that most lawsuits are just to prove the point that a certain thing belongs to a certain company. I do agree that there is no need to sue someone for millions and possibly bankrupt the company.
Well whatever works for Facebook. If they can avoid lawsuits and what not then by all means. I wonder if there in a company that can compete against facebook right now in terms of social networking.
Smith: First off I think your argument about wall posts is a good argument. Although wall posts are a kind of group texting I would have to say it isnt as direct response wise as texting. I think with the purchase of a company such as Beluga will help to expand upon Facebooks already established messaging system. A group texting direct conversation would be more convenient for useres rather than multiple messaging sessions.
Arin: If a company isn't in business to make money than what are they in business for? Lawsuits like the ones you are talking about are only about the money, which is why they are so common. Company's are involved in disputes like this every day due to the fact that they want to remain profitable.
I agree with Easton in that wall posts aren't as quick as texts. I also think that this new texting capability could allow for more private conversations with a multitude of people. Do you think that Facebook would somehow tie ads to the texting service since that is how they make money?
To what Ethan asked, Facebook will most likely tie ads to the texting service because that is their only way of making money. Since their ads do correlate to what we say on peoples' wall's or inbox messages, they may start making their texting service have correlating ads too. I could see this having a positive affect for Facebook. They would get money from the ads and more popularity from all the people using their new service.
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