Facebook acquired speech recognition and translation startup Mobile Technologies, although it may be more of an acqui-hire than anything else.
Pittsburgh-based Mobile Technologies created Jibbigo, a speech recognition and translation app that could help Facebook connect uses of different languages -- although it already has a translation service, just not a voice-recognized one, according to TechCrunch. This could also be used for voice search.
Facebook will keep supporting the Jibbigo app, but likely not for eternity. It has things to do and services to integrate, after all. The Jibbigo app launched in 2009 and uses 25 different languages to decipher voice snippets or text.
Facebook will also have the startup engineers starting work at Menlo Park, but there's no word on anyone else being saved by Facebook. Mobile Technologies never gained any outside capital, so although financial details of deal weren't disclosed, its founders likely felt lucky to finally see the monetary fruits of their 12-year-old company.
The technology could help Facebook offer voice Graph Search or provide voice-chat translations, but this may simply be an "acqui-hire" for the company so it can enrich its pool of engineers.
