Facebook Acquires Contact Importing Startup Octazen – GigaOM. Octazen's contact importer helped Facebook make its userbase viral.
Facebook last week acquired a small Malaysian startup called Octazen Solutions, maker of a contact importer that the social network had already been using to grow its number of users by encouraging them to invite their email contacts. Spokesperson Larry Yu described the buy as a “talent acquisition,” saying Octazen’s two employees have joined Facebook as engineers. As he put it in a company statement on the acquisition he sent via email: “We’ve admired the engineering team’s efforts for some time now and this is part of our ongoing effort to add experienced, accomplished technical talent to help drive the company forward in its efforts to be the central way for people to connect and share information.”
Octazen’s software helps sites like Facebook grow by making it easy for users to invite their contacts on other services. Octazen: What The Heck Did Facebook Just Buy Exactly, And Why? Facebook has acquired its third company, Malaysian startup Octazen Solutions.
Facebook says this is largely a talent acquisition, according to GigaOm. Octazen has a slightly different story on their home page, saying Facebook acquired “most of the company’s assets and to employ those assets in a different direction.” Either way, it’s leaving some people scratching their heads. Said one senior engineer at a competing company that we spoke to this evening, “Facebook just bought the web’s most talented and creative scrapers that have gotten around everyones rate limits and detection systems.” Said another person we spoke with this evening who is knowledgeable of Octazen’s product, “Facebook is so sanctimonious about protecting their own user data through Facebook Connect, but Octazen has been scraping user data for years off terms of service and then reselling it.” Facebook Buys A Startup, Counters Google Buzz.