Alexia Tsotsis currently works for TechCrunch as a writer. She is also a blogger who attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. She majored in Writing and Art, moving to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the Entertainment/Media industry. After four years of living in New York City and attending courses at New York… ? Learn More
Facebook has confirmed to us this morning that it did indeed acquire the Baltmore-based software firm WhoGlue earlier this month. WhoGlue builds social networking software for membership organizations (like college alumni networks, for example) and apparently had the fortuity to file a patent on something called “Distributed personal relationship information management system and methods” in 2001, three years before Facebook existed.
The two went to court over the patent in 2009 and the case ended in a “very positive way“ for WhoGlue in March 2010. According to WhoGlue founder Jason D. Hardebeck, the ongoing post-litigation conversations between the two companies were what eventually led to the sale.
A Facebook representative gave us the following statement, “We can confirm that we acquired some technology developed by WhoGlue. The WhoGlue team isn’t joining Facebook and instead will continue working on its own social networking software for organizations.”
According to other reports Facebook also acquired the stakes of WhoGlue’s shareholders, including Siemens, but Facebook would not give any further details on the veracity of those reports.
In a move uncharacteristic of the talent-hungry Facebook, the WhoGlue team was not part of the acquisition, and in fact Hardeback plans on forming a new company, WhoGlue LLC, that will basically continue in the same space.
The WhoGlue technology allows a group to privately network within a larger network, and can be applied to subnetwork functions like integrating Facebook Groups content more widely throughout Facebook without violating user privacy.
Our resident Facebook expert Josh Constine also had this quite interesting theory, “If it were ever to launch in China, the technology could also help Facebook operate a cordoned-off sub-network for the country that wouldn’t violate the Great Firewall.”
Pretty cool, right?
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original idea for the term…
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