Pieceable is acquired by Facebook | Hacker News Reader

Pieceable is acquired by Facebook

pieceable.com

59 pointsandrew_k17 comments

I'm actually really happy when acquisitions go down like this. That is, when they keep their product running long enough to make the transition easy (i.e., not Meebo) and open source the product.

Particularly that last piece because it opens up the market to be commoditized. The secret sauce of getting a web-based viewer of a remote iPhone Simulator session is now available for anyone. And now a bunch of competing services will likely pop up (because all the hard work is done) and that means a price war. The consumers of these services are ultimately the big winner.

I hope more deals like this happen.

I feel like this acquisition is related to Facebook App Center (launched last week) somehow. They didn't have links or screenshots for iPhone apps, but they do for Android apps. I was curious why they did not have a screenshot area/App Store link field for iPhone apps.

"Facebook is not acquiring the company, technology, or customer data."

A genuine question: Since this is essentially a talent acquisition, why doesn't someone else continue running the product? or perhaps sell it off to another company?

That's always an option, like we saw with Airbrake being acquired from Thoughtbot by Exceptional. (http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/17212734809/airbrake-acqui...) However, this really only works if you can find someone you trust enough to uphold the same level of quality in the product, branding, and customer service, since any future failure will still reflect negatively on the original developers for some time. I think open sourcing the underlying technology is a great way to allow other folks to pick up where the company left off. (We also saw this recently with Copycopter, which was from the same company as Airbrake. http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/19388751626/copycopter-is-...)

My guess would be, it would be hard to continue with the same vision as the original cofounders. I think this rings true even more in a startup because the focus and vision are constantly being refined versus an already established company. So that being said, it would be hard for a team to come in and just resume development on the technical side and product development side whilst keeping the same vision and focus as the original founders. It's definitely possible but it just seems like it would be a lot of hassle and time on the founders side to go through that process.

It's cool they decided to open source the code instead of sell it. That way everyone who wants to use it and/or study it or learn from it can do so. Seems like a nice way to give back to the community, grow the pie, etc. +1

Really happy for them. We can't wait for them to open source and integrate their technology to Delight (http://delight.io). It's going to take mobile usability testing to a new level.

Link doesn't work?

It works for me. What error message did you get? Could you try again? http://www.delight.io

Congrats Fred and Co - hope this was the exit you wanted and deserved.

Agreed - congrats guys!

And Alex, just checked out Bitgym - great idea. Will be trying it next time I'm on the treadmill!

I could have sworn that during the Instagram acquisition that Facebook wasn't going to "make a habit" out of acquisitions.

I think he may have meant not making a habit out of $1bn acquisitions of companies with lots of users.

"This is an important milestone for Facebook because it's the first time we've ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don't plan on doing many more of these, if any at all" [1]

[1] http://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10100318398827991

I think they meant that they would only do HR acquisitions going forward. I.e. no more product buys.

Great work Fred! Happy to be a client and a supporter of what you guys have pulled off. Good stuff!

Congrats to the team. Would have been even sweeter if it would have been pre-Faceplant IPO!

Hopefully this will increase the quality of their mobile apps.

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