Facebook grabs Glancee mobile meet-up app

Social network Facebook added another acquisition to its books this week as it seeks to shore up its talent pool ahead of its imminent IPO.

Glancee is a mobile discovery firm started in 2010. The US company claims that it’s not a dating app or a social network, but is designed to bring users into contact with others that share similar interests. The focus is on location enablement, with the app running constantly in the background and alerting users whenever others with similar profiles are in the immediate vicinity.

The price tag for Glancee is not known, but it is expected to be some way below the $1bn Facebook recently paid for photo sharing startup Instagram.

As with the Instagram purchase, the Glancee acquisition should give Facebook more leverage in the mobile space and follows the idea that, as the Facebook proposition gets ‘fatter’, the company needs to refocus on core features and functionality. Mark Little, principal analyst at Ovum, said: “The Facebook proposition is becoming fat, allowing sub-propositions like photo-sharing to get lost or become difficult to access.”