Post-Instagram, Facebook acqui(hires) Glancee

By Molly McHugh May 7, 2012

The Facebook acquisition news continues as the social network has just scooped up SoLoMo app Glancee. Glancee was one of SXSW 2012’s social discovery darlings that leveraged your location to find like-minded friends (and future friends) in your area. After its short run, the app will now be moving things over to Facebook HQ, where it’s undoubtedly part of the company’s attempt to strengthen its mobile reach.

Just because the deal follows right behind Facebook’s $1 billion Instagram acquisition doesn’t mean the two have much in common. The similarities end with their both being mobile-first apps. Instagram was a multi-faceted deal, wherein Facebook netted features it didn’t have while simultaneously killing a very threatening competitor. And while Instagram now falls under the Facebook umbrella, it will still function as a standalone app for all intents and purposes.

The Glancee grab, on the other hand, is an acquihire – an old Facebook M&A favorite. The Glancee team will now work for Facebook and inject their secret SoLoMo sauce into an application that has infamously struggled with location, and the Glancee app itself will shut its doors. “We [are very] excited to announced that Facebook has acquired Glancee and that we have joined the team in Menlo Park to build great products for over 900 million Facebook users,” the Glancee site reads. “We’ve had such a blast connecting people through Glancee, and we truly thank our users for being a part of the Glancee community.” The site also directs users to download their data, proverbially wiping their hands of the whole thing and moving onward and upward.

Glancee did have something Facebook needed – its ambient network technology and the talent that went with it. Facebook will likely try to use this to aid its mobile location fight, along with its Gowalla acquisition. Gowalla is more about places, and Glancee about people at places. With these two combined, Facebook might have a fighting chance at mobile-social discovery.

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Before coming to Digital Trends, Molly worked as a freelance writer, occasional photographer, and general technical lackey…

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