List of mergers and acquisitions by Facebook

Entrance to Facebook headquarters complex in Menlo Park, California

Facebook is a social networking company. Each acquisition is for the respective company in its entirety, unless otherwise specified. The acquisition date listed is the date of the agreement between Facebook and the subject of the acquisition. The value of each acquisition is listed in US dollars because Facebook's headquarters is in the United States. If the Facebook service that is derived from the acquired company is known, then it is also listed here.

Facebook has acquired more than 40 companies with its largest acquisition being the purchase of WhatsApp, paying more than $40 per WhatsApp user. The acquisition of WhatsApp costs $19 billion. It 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 $200,000  — name change from Thefacebook.com  — [3][4]
2 July 19, 2007 Parakey Offline applications/Web OS  USA, Mountain View, CA Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital Facebook Mobile Blake Ross, Joe Hewitt [5]
3 June 23, 2008 ConnectU Social networking  USA, Cambridge, MA $31,000,000 i2Hub (Court settlement) None [6][7]
4 August 10, 2009 FriendFeed Social networking aggregator  USA, Mountain View, CA $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 Friend Finder 2 engineers (remote workers) [9]
6 March 2, 2010 Divvyshot Photo management  USA, San Francisco Y Combinator, AngelList Facebook Photos Sam Odio, Paul Carduner [10]
7 May 13, 2010 Friendster patents Intellectual property/patents  USA, Mountain View, CA /   Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur $40,000,000 None [11]
8 May 26, 2010 ShareGrove Private conversations/Forums  USA, San Mateo, CA Elm Street Ventures Facebook Groups Kent Libbey, Adam Wolff [12]
9 July 8, 2010 Nextstop Travel recommendations  USA, San Francisco $2,500,000 ex-Google Charles Lin, Carl Sjogreen, Adrian Graham [13]
10 August 15, 2010 Chai Labs Internet applications  USA, Mountain View, CA $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 ~$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 ~$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 undisclosed Peter Wilson [18]
15 March 2, 2011 Beluga Group messaging  USA, Palo Alto, CA undisclosed Facebook Messenger Jonathan Perlow, Lucy Zhang, Ben Davenport [19]
16 March 20, 2011 Snaptu Mobile app developer  Israel $70,000,000 Mobile [20]
17 March 24, 2011 RecRec Computer vision  USA, San Francisco 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 Bryan O’Sullivan and Bethanye McKinney Blount [24]
21 August 2, 2011 Push Pop Press Digital publishing 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 undisclosed Mobile engineering team Founder and CEO Charles Jolley, other Strobe employees [31][32]
24 December 2, 2011 Gowalla Location Based Service  USA, Austin
25 April 9, 2012 Instagram Photo sharing  USA, San Francisco $1,000,000,000
26 April 13, 2012 Tagtile Customer loyalty app  USA, San Francisco, CA undisclosed Tagtile's founders [33][34]
27 May 5, 2012 Glancee Social discovery platform  USA, San Francisco undisclosed Three co-founders [35][36]
28 May 15, 2012 Lightbox.com Photo sharing  UK, London undisclosed Thai Tran, Nilesh Patel, Five employees [37]
29 May 21, 2012 Karma Social gifting  USA undisclosed Facebook Gifts Lee Linden, Ben Lewis [38]
30 June 18, 2012 Face.com Face recognition platform  Israel, Tel Aviv $100,000,000 [39][40]
31 July 14, 2012 Spool Mobile bookmarking and sharing content  USA, San Francisco undisclosed Mobile engineering team Avichal Garg, Curtis Spencer, Six employees [41]
32 July 20, 2012 Acrylic Software RSS app Pulp and secure database app Wallet  Canada, Vancouver undisclosed Facebook's design team Two employees [42]
33 August 24, 2012 Threadsy Threadsy is a social aggregator, Maker of social marketing tool Swaylo  USA, San Francisco undisclosed [43]
34 February 28, 2013 Atlas Atlas advertiser suite  USA, Seattle, Washington less than $100,000,000 [44]
35 March 2013 osmeta Mobile software  USA, Mountain View, CA 17 engineers [45]
36 March 14, 2013 Hot Studio Design agency  USA, New York, NY, San Francisco, CA [46]
37 April 23, 2013 Spaceport Cross-platform game framework [47]
38 April 25, 2013 Parse Mobile app backends  USA, San Francisco, CA $85,000,000 [48]
39 July 18, 2013 Monoidics Automatic verification software  UK, London [49]
40 August 12, 2013 Jibbigo Speech translation app [50]
41 October 13, 2013 Onavo Mobile analytics [51]
42 December 17, 2013 SportStream Sports conversation analysis  USA, San Francisco, CA [52]
43 January 8, 2014 Little Eye Labs Performance analysis and monitoring tools for Android  India, Bangalore, India $15,000,000[53] [54]
44 January 13, 2014 Branch Web conversation platform  USA, New York, NY $15,000,000 [55]
45 February 19, 2014 WhatsApp Mobile instant messaging  USA, Mountain View, CA $19,000,000,000 Co-founder and CEO Jan Koum [56]
46 March 25, 2014 Oculus VR Virtual reality technology  USA, Irvine, CA $2,000,000,000 Founder Palmer Luckey, Engineer Chris Dycus, and CTO John D. Carmack [57][58]
47 March 27, 2014 Ascenta High-altitude UAVs  UK, Somerset, England $20,000,000 [59]
48 April 24, 2014 ProtoGeo Oy Fitness tracking app Moves  Finland, Helsinki undisclosed [60]
49 August 7, 2014 PrivateCore Secure Server Technology  USA, Palo Alto, CA undisclosed [61]
50 August 26, 2014 WaveGroup Sound Sound Studio  USA, Burlingame, CA undisclosed [62]
51 January 6, 2015 Wit.ai Speech recognition  USA, Palo Alto, California undisclosed [63]
52 January 8, 2015 Quickfire Video Compression  USA undisclosed [64]
53 March 14, 2015 TheFind Ecommerce  USA undisclosed [65]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Why Facebook buys startups". Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  2. ↑ "Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion". Retrieved 2012-04-04.
  3. ↑ Williams, Chris (October 1, 2007). "Facebook wins Manx battle for face-book.com". The Register (London). Retrieved June 13, 2008.|
  4. ↑ "thefacebook.com becomes facebook.com for $200,000". Timeline of Facebook.com. Xtimeline.com. August 23, 2005.
  5. ↑ "Facebook buys Parakey". Gigaom. 2007-07-19. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  6. ↑ "Judge Blocks Rival's Effort to Learn Value of Facebook's Stock". New York Law Journal. 2010-03-17. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  7. ↑ "The AP Reveals Details of Facebook/ConnectU Settlement With Greatest Hack Ever". TechCrunch. 2009-02-11. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  8. ↑ "Facebook Acquires FriendFeed". TechCrunch. 2009-08-10. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  9. ↑ "Octazen: What The Heck Did Facebook Just Buy Exactly, And Why?". TechCrunch. 2010-02-19. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  10. ↑ "Facebook Buys Up Divvyshot To Make Facebook Photos Even Better". TechCrunch. 2010-04-02. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  11. ↑ "Facebook buys friendster patents for 40m". GigaOm. 2010-08-04. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  12. ↑ "Facebook Acquires ShareGrove". Mashable. 2010-05-26. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  13. ↑ "Facebook acquires social travel-recommendation site Nextstop". TechCrunch. 2010-07-08. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  14. ↑ "Facebook Acquires Chai Labs, Gains 'Godfather of Google Adsense'". PCMag. 2010-08-15. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  15. ↑ "Facebook acquires Hot Potato". Mashable. 2010-08-20. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  16. ↑ "Facebook Acquires Drop.io, Nabs Sam Lessin". TechCrunch. 2010-10-29. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  17. ↑ "FB.com acquired by Facebook". NameMon News. January 11, 2011.
  18. ↑ "Facebook Acquires Mobile Advertising Company Out of Stealth Mode". AllThingsD. 2011-01-25. Retrieved 2011-01-25.
  19. ↑ "Facebook Acquires Group Messaging Service Beluga In A Talent AND Technology Deal". TechCrunch. 2011-03-01. Retrieved 2011-03-01.
  20. ↑ "Confirmed: Facebook Acquires Snaptu (For An Estimated $60 – $70 Million)". TechCrunch. 2011-03-20. Retrieved 2011-03-20.
  21. ↑ http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/27/facebook-acq-hires-daytum/
  22. ↑ "Daytum's Dataviz Wizards, Nick Felton and Ryan Case, Join Facebook". DesignTaxi. 2011-04-27. Retrieved 2011-04-27.
  23. ↑ "Facebook Buys Sofa, A Software Design Team That Will Help Make Facebook More Beautiful". TechCrunch. 2011-06-09. Retrieved 2011-06-09.
  24. ↑ "Facebook buys e-mail prioritiser MailRank". FirstPost. 2011-11-16. Retrieved 2011-11-16.
  25. ↑ Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris (2 August 2011). "Push Pop Press acquired by Facebook". Push Pop Pres. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
  26. ↑ Reisinger, Don (2 August 2011). "Facebook buys digital bookmaker Push Pop Press". CNET. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
  27. ↑ Olivarez-Giles, Nathan (2 August 2011). "Facebook buys iPad book maker Push Pop Press [Updated]". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
  28. ↑ Protalinski, Emil (11 October 2011). "Facebook acquires Q&A service Friend.ly". ZDNet. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
  29. ↑ Gaudin, Sharon (10 October 2011). "Facebook acquires start-up friend.ly". Computerworld. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
  30. ↑ Hernandez, Barbara E. (13 October 2011). "Facebook Acquires Startup Friend.ly". NBC Bay Area. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
  31. ↑ Wauters, Robin (8 November 2011). "Facebook Acquires Team Behind HTML5 App Platform Strobe; SproutCore Lives On". TechCrunch. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
  32. ↑ Oreskovic, Alexi (8 November 2011). "Facebook hires mobile tech developer team". Reuters. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
  33. ↑ MacMillian, Douglas (14 April 2012). "Facebook Acquires Team Behind Customer-Loyalty App Tagtile". Bloomberg News. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
  34. ↑ The Tagtile Team (12 April 2012). "We are joining Facebook!". Tagtile. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
  35. ↑ Protalinski, Emil (5 May 2012). "Facebook acquires location-based social discovery startup Glancee". ZDNet. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
  36. ↑ DesMarais, Christina (5 May 2012). "Facebook Acquisition Points to Future of More Phone Tracking". PCWorld. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
  37. ↑ "Facebook Hires Team From Android Photosharing App Dev Lightbox To Quiet Mobile Fears".
  38. ↑ "Facebook stumbles, buys startup Karma".
  39. ↑ Levy, Ari (19 June 2012). "Facebook acquires Face.com — stock up 4.7 percent". San Francisco Gate. Retrieved 19 June 2012.
  40. ↑ Gil (18 June 2012). "Awesome News – Facebook Acquires Face.com". Face.com. Retrieved 19 June 2012.
  41. ↑ "Facebook acquires mobile-bookmarking service Spool". CNET. 14 July 2012.
  42. ↑ "Facebook acquires Mac, iOS developer Acrylic Software". CNET. 20 July 2012.
  43. ↑ "Facebook Acquires Threadsy, Maker of Social Marketing Tool Swaylo". Techcrunch. 24 August 2012.
  44. ↑ "Facebook Confirms It Will Acquire Atlas Advertiser Suite From Microsoft To Close The Ad Spend Loop". Techcrunch. 28 February 2013.
  45. ↑ "Confirmed: Facebook Has Acquired Osmeta, A Stealth Mobile Software Startup". "TechCrunch". 10 April 2013.
  46. ↑ "Welcoming the Talented Team Behind Hot Studio". "Facebook". 29 March 2013.
  47. ↑ "Facebook Acqhires Team From HTML5 Game Platform Spaceport.io, Which Will Keep Running". "TechCrunch". 23 April 2013.
  48. ↑ "Welcoming Parse to Facebook". "Facebook". 25 April 2013.
  49. ↑ "Facebook to Acquire Monoidics' Assets!". "Monoidics". 18 July 2013.
  50. ↑ "Facebook Acquires "Mobile Technologies", Developer Of Speech Translation App Jibbigo". "TechCrunch". 12 August 2013.
  51. ↑ "Facebook Buys Mobile Data Analytics Company Onavo, Reportedly For Up To $200M... And (Finally?) Gets Its Office In Israel". "TechCrunch". 14 October 2013.
  52. ↑ "Sporty Facebook acquires a San Francisco-based startup". Woolor. 17 December 2013.
  53. ↑ "Indian Startup Little Eye Labs Confirms Its Acquisition By Facebook, Deal Worth $10-$15M". TechCrunch. 7 January 2014. Retrieved 26 March 2014.
  54. ↑ "It’s Official, Bangalore Based Little Eye Labs Acquired by Facebook". NextBigWhat. 8 January 2013.
  55. ↑ "Facebook Acquires Branch Media Team To Lead New "Conversations" Group". TechCrunch. 13 January 2013.
  56. ↑ "Facebook to Acquire WhatsApp". Facebook. 19 February 2014.
  57. ↑ "Facebook acquires Oculus VR". Facebook. 25 March 2014.
  58. ↑ 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.
  59. ↑ "Facebook to Acquire Ascenta". Facebook. 27 March 2014.
  60. ↑ 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.
  61. ↑ Perez, Sarah (August 7, 2014). "Facebook Buys Secure Server Technology Provider PrivateCore". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  62. ↑ "Facebook Acquires A Sound Studio To Help Power Its App Factory". TechCrunch. Retrieved August 26, 2014.
  63. ↑ "Facebook acquires speech recognition startup Wit.ai". The Next Web. January 5, 2015. Retrieved January 6, 2015.
  64. ↑ "Facebook Acquires QuickFire Networks, A ‘Pied Piper’ For Video". TechCrunch. January 8, 2015. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  65. ↑ "Facebook Buys And Shuts Down Shopping Site TheFind To Boost Commerce In Ads". TechCrunch. March 13, 2015. Retrieved March 13, 2015.

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