Facebook hires Lightbox staff
Mobile start-up Lightbox announced it would be joining Facebook and discontinuing its Android photo sharing app next month.
The start-up’s team of seven staffers, as reported by several outlets, will join Facebook just days before the social networking giant’s IPO. The company made the announcement on its blog Tuesday.
“Today, we’re happy to announce that the Lightbox team is joining Facebook, where we’ll have the opportunity to build amazing products for Facebook’s 500+ million mobile users,” the mobile app’s founders, Thai Tran and Nilesh Patel, wrote in the post.
In documents filed with the SEC, Facebook has stated that generating revenue from its mobile app -- which more and more users are turning to for their Facebook fix -- is a challenge the growing company must overcome.
Last month, Facebook continued its strategy to deal with the mobile challenge by making a billion-dollar purchase of Instagram, a photo-sharing mobile social network. Although extremely popular with 30 million users, Instagram is not yet profitable.
As for Lightbox, the start-up will no longer be allowing new sign-ups and current users will have until June 15 to download their pictures. Tran and Patel also wrote that parts of Lightbox’s code will be shared on Github, an open-source website.
“The Lightbox team has incredible experience developing innovative mobile products that people love,” a Facebook spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We look forward to welcoming this world-class team of engineers to Facebook.”
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