It looks like Facebook might be moving into something rather interesting, the social network website recently agreed to purchase a speech recognition startup called Mobile Technologies. The news was announced by the product manager of Facebook, Tom Stocky, saying that Facebook will acquire the startup’s machine-translation technology as well as engineering talent.
In case you have no idea what the startup does, Mobile Technologies is the developer behind the Android and iOS app Jibbigo, which translates text or speech into another language. It supports 20 languages including Chinese (Mandarin), Korean, Arabic and many more. The app offers free unlimited online translation but also offers an offline version via an in-app purchase.
No numbers have been mentioned regarding the deal, Tom Stocky only mentioned that they will continue to support the app “for the time being” while they are working on strengthening Facebook’s mission of making the world more open and connected. I guess all we can do now is sit and wait to see what Facebook will offer in its future updates. Meanwhile, check out Jibbigo for more information about the app for Android or iOS.
(Source: Pocket-lint, Facebook, Jibbigo)
