After unconfirmed reports on the pending deal, Hot Potato, a New York-based startup that specializes in social activity updates, announced today that it has been acquired by Facebook for an undisclosed amount. The company will be shutting down operations within a month.
Peter Kafka of MediaMemo estimates that the sale netted between $10 and $15 million. TechCrunch also speculates that the price tag was around $10 million. Justin Shaffer, the founder and CEO of Hot Potato, would not comment on the financial details of the acquisition.
In a statement to Mashable, Facebook spokesperson Jonny Thaw said, “We’re excited to confirm that we recently acquired Hot Potato, a service that helps people socialize around live events and share what they’re doing with friends. We’ve admired for some time how Hot Potato is tackling this space and look forward to working with them to bring Hot Potato innovations to Facebook.”
Thaw would not comment on the terms of the acquisition. Hot Potato’s eight employees, most of whom are developers, will be moving to Palo Alto shortly; Shaffer has already started at Facebook. Hot Potato raised a $1.42 million Series A round late last year and was backed RRE Ventures, Betaworks and Ron Conway. It’s not clear how many use the application.
Although Facebook would not comment on what Hot Potato will be working on, it likely bought the company, which launched as a mobile-based application last November, to improve the functionality around status updates and its newly launched Facebook Places feature, and to tap into real-time updates around events. Hot Potato’s announcement hints that some of its features will be integrated into Facebook, as well: “Today, we’re thrilled to announce that some of the features and thinking behind Hot Potato are going to be exposed to a much larger audience: We’ve been acquired by Facebook.”
According to its blog, Hot Potato will be wrapping up operations and delete all user data in about a month. The blog stressed that “no user data or account information will be kept by Facebook.”
Reviews: Facebook, Mashable, blog
More About: android, facebook, Facebook Places, hot potato, iphone, Mobile 2.0, social media, social updates
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