Facebook acquires startup Mobile Technologies, maker of mobile translation app Jibbigo

Facebook's mobile push is getting stronger, as the company acquired Mobile Technologies, the team behind mobile (iOS and Android) voice translation app Jibbigo. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to AppData, Jibbigo is the No. 28 highest-grossing iOS travel app. Facebook will take most of Mobile Technologies' team and have them work in the Menlo Park, Calif. campus, according to Jibbigo. Facebook Director of Product Management Tom Stocky confirmed the acquisition in a post: It has always been our mission to make the world more open and connected. Although more than a billion people around the world already use Facebook every month, we are always looking for ways to help connect the rest of the world as well. Voice technology has become an increasingly important way for people to navigate mobile devices and the web, and this technology will help us evolve our products to match that evolution. We believe this acquisition is an investment in our long-term product roadmap as we continue towards our company's mission. Jibbigo also posted about the acquisition on its website: Mobile Technologies was founded in 2001 with the goal of breaking through language barriers to open up communication between the people of the world. With 6,000 languages in the world, the language divide presents the greatest human communication challenge. Mobile Technologies has developed a number of cross-lingual communication tools: Jibbigo, the world’s first speech-to-speech translator on a phone that runs online and even off-line, independent from the Internet. Travelers around the world use Jibbigo to communicate in foreign countries and health-care workers overcome the language challenge in humanitarian missions. Mobile Technologies also developed and deployed the first automatic, simultaneous interpretation service for lectures and deployed it in educational settings, so that ideas can transcend nations and cultures. Facebook, with its mission to make the world more open and connected, provides the perfect platform to apply our technology at a truly global scale. We look forward to continuing to develop our technology at Facebook and finding new and interesting ways to apply it to Facebook’s long-term product roadmap. Readers: What do you think Facebook can do with Jibbigo's technology?

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Facebook acquires startup Mobile Technologies, maker of mobile translation app Jibbigo

Justin Lafferty

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Justin Lafferty