Facebook Acquires “Mobile Technologies”, Developer Of Speech Translation App Jibbigo

Facebook’s latest acquisition could help it connect users across language barriers. It has just announced that it’s acquired the team and technology of Pittsburgh’s Mobile Technologies, a speech recognition and machine translation startup that developed the app Jibbigo. From voice search to translated News Feed posts, Facebook could to a lot with this technology.
Facebook tells me “We’ll continue to support the [Jibbigo] app for the time being.” Jibbigo launched in 2009, and allows you to select from over 25 languages, record a voice snippet in that language or type in some text, and then get a translation displayed on screen and read aloud to you in a language of your choosing.
This made Jibbigo’s iOS and Android apps useful companions for travelers and international health care workers. Why fumble with a phrase book when you could just bring an app with you? Through purchasable offline translator packs, Jibbigo made money by letting users understand foreign speech without the need for a data or wifi connection.
“Members of the MT team will join our engineering teams here in Menlo Park” Facebook tells me, implying some might not be joining the social network’s ranks. Facebook refused to specify exactly how many people were joining it from Mobile Technologies which was founded in 2001, or the terms of the deal. Considering it had never raised outside funding, the acquisition is likely a sizable financial win for Mobile Technology’s founders.

source techcrunch