This Week in Online Evidence – March 4th 2011
Highlight: Facebook acquire Beluga
This week Facebook acquired Beluga, the group messaging application for smartphones with the slogan “It’s instant, intimate and simple”. Beluga users can create private groups (“pods”) of friends to stay in touch with or coordinate plans. You can send and receive instant updates, location information and photos all via push notification. Although Facebook’s acquisition of this very small and young company is notable it should not come as a shock to Facebook followers since the company has clearly identified mobile services as a key growth area. To that end they are currently rolling out a new unified messaging system (the upgraded “Messages” tool) and within the past year they have added a new Groups feature to their iPhone and Android apps. At its core Facebook is now a communication service and per Craig Moffett Bernstein Research “the move to acquire Beluga makes this explicit. Beluga puts Facebook squarely into competition with carriers for the first time.”
