{"id":286717,"date":"2011-03-01T23:01:46","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T23:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/03\/01\/facebook-snaps-up-hot-startup\/"},"modified":"2011-03-01T23:01:46","modified_gmt":"2011-03-01T23:01:46","slug":"facebook-snaps-up-hot-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/03\/01\/facebook-snaps-up-hot-startup\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook snaps up hot startup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div readability=\"87.2039800995\"><span id=\"fb-recommend\"\/><br \/>\n<span>By Laurie Segall, staff reporter<\/span><span>March 1, 2011: 6:00 PM ET<\/span><!--startclickprintexclude--><br clear=\"all\"\/><!--endclickprintexclude--><!-- CONTENT --><\/p>\n<p>NEW YORK (CNNMoney)  &#8212; Facebook is making a play for a piece of the small but much-buzzed-about group text messaging market. On Tuesday, it announced that it has acquired eight-month-old Beluga. <\/p>\n<p>Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.<\/p>\n<p><!-- REAP --><!--startclickprintexclude--><!--endclickprintexclude--><!-- \/REAP --><\/p>\n<p>The move gives Facebook both the Beluga service and, more significantly, the engineering team behind it. Beluga has a small but skilled <a href=\"http:\/\/belugapods.com\/about\" target=\"new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">staff of three<\/a>, all of whom are former Google employees. Based in Palo Alto, Calif., the company is located just a few miles away from Facebook&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2011\/02\/04\/technology\/facebook_headquarters\/index.htm\">new Menlo Park headquarters<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Group texting &#8212; services that let you send messages to multiple recipients at once &#8212; is a tiny, niche field right now, but it&#8217;s expected to be in the spotlight at the upcoming South By Southwest (SXSW) conference. That gathering is known as a launch pad for social media technology: Both Twitter and Foursquare took off after drawing attention at past SXSW shows. <\/p>\n<p>Beluga, which just hit the &#8220;1 million messages sent&#8221; milestone, said its decision to sell to Facebook would expand its user base. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We talked to people at Facebook, we saw how much our visions aligned,&#8221; co-founder Ben Davenport told CNNMoney.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have a lot of fans of the app inside Facebook, and we think that by joining forces, we will have an opportunity to build something very powerful for many many more users,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>For the time being, the service will &#8220;continue to function as it does today,&#8221; the team <a href=\"http:\/\/belugapods.com\/fb\" target=\"new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrote on their blog<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Facebook also suggested that it doesn&#8217;t plan to tamper with the core Beluga concept. &#8220;We&#8217;re excited that the team will continue their vision for groups and mobile communication as part of Facebook,&#8221; Facebook spokesman Jonny Thaw said. <\/p>\n<p>Also on Tuesday, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2011\/01\/03\/technology\/groupme_texting\/index.htm\">Beluga rival GroupMe<\/a> rolled out a new version of its app. The update allows users to share their locations through Foursquare and share photos within the app.<\/p>\n<p>Another contender, <a href=\"http:\/\/fastsociety.com\/\" target=\"new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fast Society<\/a>, plans to release an updated version of its group messaging service next week &#8212; just ahead of SXSW. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We think it&#8217;s going be evolution of not only of our product, but of the space in general, &#8221; Fast Society co-founder Matthew Rosenberg said. \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2011\/03\/01\/technology\/facebook_acquires_beluga\/index.htm?section=money_topstories&#038;utm_source=feedburner&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fmoney_topstories+%28Top+Stories%29#TOP\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.cdn.turner.com\/money\/images\/bug.gif\" alt=\"To top of page\" border=\"0\" width=\"7\" height=\"7\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!-- \/CONTENT --><!--startclickprintexclude--><!--startclickprintexclude--><br \/>\n<!--endclickprintexclude--><\/p>\n<p>First Published: March 1, 2011: 5:16 PM ET<\/p>\n<p><!--endclickprintexclude--><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>Go here to see the original:<br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/rss.cnn.com\/~r\/rss\/money_topstories\/~3\/1ATzeLhWBJo\/index.htm\" title=\"Facebook snaps up hot startup\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Facebook snaps up hot startup<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> By Laurie Segall, staff reporter March 1, 2011: 6:00 PM ET NEW YORK (CNNMoney) &#8212; Facebook is making a play for a piece of the small but much-buzzed-about group text messaging market. On Tuesday, it announced that it has acquired eight-month-old Beluga. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-286717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Facebook snaps up hot startup - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/03\/01\/facebook-snaps-up-hot-startup\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Facebook snaps up hot startup - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"By Laurie Segall, staff reporter March 1, 2011: 6:00 PM ET NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Facebook is making a play for a piece of the small but much-buzzed-about group text messaging market. 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