Facebook picks up Parakey and its 'web OS'

Stephen Withers
Monday, 23 July 2007 11:37

IT Industry - Strategy

Social networking site Facebook has acquired Parakey, a company formed by Firefox co-founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt.

The idea behind Parakey was to bridge the gap between information held on the web and the desktop. The idea is to provide tools that offer a single interface regardless of where the underlying data is located. As an article published in Spectrum Online last November put it, "it makes it really easy to store your stuff and share it with the world."

Ross and Hewett will work on Facebook Platform, which allows developers to create applications that take advantage of relationships between Facebook users, just as Salesforce.com allows outside developers to leverage its CRM data.

Facebook Platform was announced in May this year.

Presumably, the concepts the pair were developing at Parakey will be incorporated into Facebook Platform. "The work they’ve done with Firefox and Parakey and their approach to building products fit right in at Facebook," said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook.

"Facebook Platform is finally making it easy to share experiences with friends and family over the web, a goal Joe and I have worked toward for years," said Ross.

No financial details of the acquisition - Facebook's first - were disclosed.