Facebook acquires 'social discovery' service Glancee

Following its buy of Instagram, Facebook further fattens its portfolio of mobile technologies by nabbing an app designed to help people connect with old and new friends in the real world.

Just about a month after scooping up mobile photo-sharing app Instagram for approximately $1 billion, Facebook has further fattened its mobile portfolio by acquiring Glancee, a location-based, "social discovery" app designed to connect you with friends in the real world.

A notice on Glancee's Web site today reads:

 We started Glancee in 2010 with the goal of bringing together the best of your physical and digital worlds. We wanted to make it easy to discover the hidden connections around you, and to meet interesting people. Since then Glancee has connected thousands of people, empowering serendipity and pioneering social discovery.

We are therefore very excited to announce that Facebook has acquired Glancee and that we have joined the team in Menlo Park to build great products for over 900 million Facebook users. We've had such a blast connecting people through Glancee, and we truly thank our users for being a part of the Glancee community.

Facebook said in a statement, "We can't wait for co-founders Andrea, Alberto, and Gabriel to join the Facebook team to work on products that help people discover new places and share them with friends."

Facebook said in its S-2 filing in advance of its upcoming IPO that its users "could decide to increasingly access our products primarily through mobile devices," and it seems clear the company wants to be sure it has access to cutting-edge features in that realm.The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Social-discovery app and Glancee competitor Highlight generated huge buzz among members of the tech press prior to this year's South by Southwest Interactive conference.