Los Angeles — Popular social media giant Facebook on Tuesday snapped up yet another recently established start-up called Beluga, the one looking to command the suddenly hot again group messaging market, and founded by former Google employees which allows users to send group messages to family or friends.
The company, which has earned a moderate amount of publicity, was unlikely to sell so early. But Tuesday’s acquisition of Beluga, is not that much of a shock that Facebook pounced in to snap it up: Beluga’s three co-founders are former Google employees, and were likely appealing to Facebook as the company looks over and over again to fill its product and engineering teams with entrepreneurially minded people by buying their start-ups.
The startup’s service empower users to send instant group messages, photos and location information across multiple platforms, which is tantamounts to other apps like GroupMe (which just got location and image sharing in a recent revamp) and textPlus.
Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
“We were stressed out to confirm that we have just acquired the assets and brains behind Beluga, whose simple and exquisite mobile apps blew us away as a solution to help groups of friends stay in touch on the move,” Facebook said in a statement.
The Palo Alto, California-based Facebook said the Beluga team “will continue their vision for groups and mobile communication as part of Facebook.”
What is more surprising is that Facebook does not plan to close down Beluga, as it habitually does when it buys tiny start-ups. This is a sign that its technology may live on as part of something within Facebook–perhaps a group-messaging service of the social media network’s own.
Beluga and Facebook will collaborate on “novel and better ways to communicate and share group experiences,” Beluga said in a note on its Web site. “We are thrilled to continue to build our vision for mobile group messaging as part of the Facebook team.”
Beluga is “group messaging simplified,” the company said. The free app – available for iOS and Android devices – is intended to facilitate friends to stay in touch on the go. “Use it to plan a night out or just share updates and photos,” Beluga said.
Beluga is the brainchild of three former Google execs. Before establishing Beluga, CEO Ben Davenport helped build Google AdSense, president Lucy Zhang worked on Google AdWords, Google News, and Google Docs, while CTO Jonathan Perlow served as senior staff engineer at Google, working on Gmail, Gmail Chat, and Mail Goggles. Perlow also served as a development lead at Microsoft, while Davenport helped build MSN Explorer.
“For now, Beluga will continue to operate as it does today,” Beluga said. “Your Beluga account and data will not be lost. We’ll be providing more details on future plans for Beluga in the coming weeks.”
But the fact that Beluga is now part of Facebook could change everything. However, Beluga assured that the service will continue unaltered for now and it will provide details on future plans in the coming weeks.