Facebook acquires social marketing company Threadsy

Terms of deal undisclosed, but was most likely an acqui-hire

Facebook may be hurting a bit these days, but that does not mean the company is going away any time soon. In fact, the company is still making deals, and buying up new companies, to take itself into the future.

Facebook has acquired Threadsy, the operator of social marketing tool Swaylo, it was announced on Swaylo’s blog on Friday.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed, though this is most likely an acqui-hire.

“We built Swaylo because we believe Facebook and other social media services are the digital representation of our lives,” Rob Goldman, founder and CEO of Threadsy, said in the post.

“There is no better opportunity to take Swaylo’s vision to the next level than at Facebook.”

Despite the Facebook acquisition, Swaylo will continue to operate as an independent company for its current investors, August Capital and Maveron Capital. Threadsy has raised upwards of $6 million in two rounds of funding.

What does Swaylo do?

San Francisco-based Threadsy was founded in 2008. It began as a tool for users to see all of their feeds from various social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, in one place.

After shutting down in November 2011, the company shifted to focusing on Swaylo, a service for people to find out their audience and reach on social media. The service is similar to the one offered by Klout, which scores a user’s “social media influence,” based on 400 different variables.

Threadsy also offerers SwayloPro a paid service which businesses could use to track insights about Facebook users, create word of mouth campaigns by engaging top Facebook influencers and gain insights into the fanbase of their competitors.

The company announced on Friday that it would be discontinuing its free service for regular users, but that its paid service for businesses would continue to operate.

Why purchase Threadsy

Facebook makes acquisitions for three reasons: technology, traction, or talent. In this case Facebook was most likely going for talent.

Earlier this year, Facebook made an acqui-hire when it purchased mobile social discovery app Glancee for an undisclosed amount in May.

Glancee works on top of Facebook, so in order to use Glancee, you have to sign on using Facebook Connect. 

By signing into Facebook Connect, Glancee takes your "likes" and compares them to other people's "likes" to find matches and similarities. People with similar interests are then shown to one another, depending on location.

Facebook has acquired around 40 founders through acquisitions and of those, only several have left:

• Brett Taylor, co-founder of FriendFeed, which was purchased by Facebook in August 2009 for $50 million. Taylor left in June to start his own company with Facebook engineer Kevin Gibbs.

•  Paul Buchheit, co-founder of FriendFeed, who left to become a venture capitalist at Y Combinator.

• Carl Sjogreen, founder of travel recommendation website Nextstop, left in July. His company was purchased by Facebook in July 2011 for an undisclosed amount.

• Sam Odio left in June 2011, a little over a year after his company, Divvyshot, was purchased by Facebook in April 2010.

Facebook stock was down slightly on Friday, closing at $19.41, around half of its $38 IPO price in May.

Facebook and Swaylo were unavailable for comment

(Image source: blog.threadsy.com)