Facebook acquires Mobile Technologies, maker of Jibbigo translation app

Facebook has acquired the company behind language translation app Jibbigo, Mobile Technologies, with the social network's Tom Stocky having first announced the news on his Facebook page. The acquisition scored the social network both Mobile Technologies' employees and its technologies, both of which will be heading to Menlo Park.

Facebook has no plans to shut down Jibbigo right now, which has been around since 2009 and presently supports more than 25 languages. Unlike some translation apps, this one works by letting the user record some spoken words, receiving the translation of those words in a different languages. Such lends some intriguing possibilities for what Facebook might have planned.

Said Facebook's Tom Stocky in a Facebook status: "I'm excited to announce that we've agreed to acquire Mobile Technologies, a company with an amazing team that's behind some of the world's leading speech recognition and machine translation technology. With this deal we will welcome some of the industry's most talented people to our engineering teams in Menlo Park, California."

He went on to say that the social network aims to "make the world more open and connected", and that despite being used by millions of people across the globe, it would like to get more on board. Voice technologies is apparently one way it plans to accomplish this, saying that such functionality has become more important in recent times, and will allow Facebook to keep up with shifting demands.

The particulars about the acquisition – financial details, which Jibbigo employees will be heading to California, how long the app will remain supported, etc. – aren't known, though the details will likely appear in time. For now, what we do know is that this is just one piece of Facebook's "long-term product roadmap."

SOURCE: TechCrunch