Plutor & Fedor: A Facebook Acquisition Story

Facebook has a big problem that, in my opinion, Sofa can solve. It consists of many talented developers, but design has never been an integral part of Facebook. However, on the scale at which they operate, design is crucial to win wars. Apple has Jonathan Ive. Facebook needs exactly that. By buying Sofa, they’ve acquired ten Ive’s at once.

(via robertgaal-en)

At first I was confused by the fact that Facebook acquired Sofa which is (was?) a great Mac OS development company (I personally love what they did with Versions and Kaleidoscope). After some thought and how Robert Gaal puts it, Facebook can really use a team of brilliant designers.

Tumblr and Twitter have shown that design is a great asset to their services. It seems that Tumblr was build with design being an important part of it from the start. Twitter didn’t have good design at the beginning but they have changed that by hiring Douglas Bowman (who was famously displeased by Google’s take on design) and bringing Loren Brichter into their team by acquiring Tweetie (now the official Twitter client).

I’m not a big Facebook user but it will be interesting to see how it will evolve once the new designers get their hands on Facebook pixels and UX.