San Francisco — In a novel move for talent acquisition, and its sheen desire to glorify their page and blend in a more attractive interface, social media giant Facebook, over the weekend disclosed that it has acquired Sofa, a software design firm based in Amsterdam, which developed Mac apps like Kaleidoscope and Versions.
The Dutch software company is well known for its team of design and development talent and would help social media giants’ website be a little more beautiful. In an announcement on Sofa’s blog, the company says:
“We expected to keep working at Sofa forever. But after Facebook first made contact, we were quickly convinced to join forces,” the company wrote on its blog. “We feel challenged and at home at the same time, and can really get things done there. But equally important, we believe that at Facebook, we will be making a real difference to a lot of people’s lives.”
Facebook is full of talent and has a great culture. We feel challenged and at home at the same time, and can really get things done there. But equally important, we believe that at Facebook, we will be making a real difference to a lot of people’s lives.
The Sofa team will be moving from Amsterdam to Palo Alto in the coming weeks – and we’ll make sure to infuse some of our particular flavor of Dutch culture at Facebook.
A Facebook spokesperson said, as quoted by The Next Web, “We noticed their products and then found and met them at SXSW and discovered that our team values and cultures were really similar. Then we invited them to FB. Rest is history!”
Established in 2006 and based in Amsterdam, Sofa has received several commendations in appreciation of the company’s eye for beautiful aesthetics. Two years in a row (2008 and 2009), the company won the Apple Design Award in a contest judged by actual Apple engineers.
The 11 core employees of Sofa have contributed their work for Firefox as well as TomTom. Besides, the company is celebrated for its popular Mac applications (like Kaleidoscope and Versions) and e-commerce products (Checkout, Enstore) over the Internet. Sofa, is also famed extensively for all of its own designs, which comprises of art, icons, and also interfaces for well-known like TomTom and Mozilla.
Sofa explicitly released a statement on its site stating, “Both of its core apps, Kaleidoscope and Versions, will remain available and we are committed to securing a great future for them outside Sofa. We are also working with our joint venture partner to provide the smoothest transition and best possible future for Checkout, Enstore and their collective customers.”
More importantly, further development on the applications may slow, since the Sofa team will be at Facebook, but every bit of evidence we have says that development would not shut down completely.
It is clear that Facebook was mainly pursuing the talent that Sofa has to offer in this deal by not taking the products. Facebook likely saw the organized talent that Sofa has brought together and the type of clientele the organization has already worked with. Sofa has only been in existence since 2006 making their progress more significant.
In a statement, Facebook also said, “The team will cater to a wide selection of the products that the design team works on. Typically, each Facebook product has a designer who is a core part of the team.”
It will be very interesting to see what Facebook features come of this acquisition. Although at this point, it is unclear exactly what aspect of Facebook design Sofa will be focusing on. What we do know is that the social networking website has a knack for reconfiguring the site’s design every eight seconds, often pissing off a large number of users, at least temporarily. Maybe Sofa can help the site more smoothly make design transitions, appealing to everybody.
Lastly, the transition will be occurring quickly, but the company has already promised to stay true to its roots. According to Sofa, “The Sofa team will be moving from Amsterdam to Palo Alto in the coming weeks — and we will make sure to instill some of our particular flavor of Dutch culture at Facebook.”
Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.