Facebook continues shopping spree

FACEBOOK    ACQUISITION    IPO 

Global - Facebook has picked up social discovery app Glancee in its latest IPO acquisition, according to one of its spokespersons. 

While the spokesperson declined to disclose terms of the acquisition, the deal closed on Friday and the full Glancee team will be joining Facebook at its Menlo Park office.

Glancee sent an email to users saying that the product will stop working but before that users can download their messages from the service. Glancee is the first of the much-SXSW-hyped social discovery app acquired.

The Glancee team will "work on products that help people discover new places and share them with friends," said the spokesperson.

After folding its Places product's check-in feature into the status update form last August, Facebook has been working to build out its location offerings. The company bought onetime Foursquare rival Gowalla last December and has that team developing the ability for third-party apps whose users register with their Facebook accounts to post location-tied status updates, photos and videos that will appear in their Facebook profiles.

Last month, Facebook grabbed social-photo app Instagram for US$1 billion, and over the past couple months the social network has been snatching up patents from Microsoft for US$550 million and from IBM for an undisclosed amount.

Facebook has been picking up the patent amid an intellectual property battle with Yahoo that has seen the companies volleying counterclaims back and forth and back and forth.

The Glancee acquisition is only the latest in a string of high-profile deals secured by Facebook before it goes public later this month.

Facebook is expected to hit the stock market on 18 May, according to The Guardian.

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