Pinterest 'acqui-hires' Livestar team
The inspirational social network has pinned down the engineers behind a recommendations mobile app. Hopefully it received a friends and family discount.
Pinterest has agreed to purchase Livestar, a 2-year-old mobile application that doles out recommendations for restaurants, movies, and music, the companies announced today.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Livestar's application was shuttered immediately, which means that Pinterest's purchase is technically an "acqui-hire" and is motivated entirely by an interest in pinning down more talent.
The engineering team behind Livestar's soon-to-be-defunct service is transferring over to the social network for inspiration in the weeks ahead. But Livestar founder and CEO Fritz Lanman, a former Microsoft executive and angel investor with a stake in Pinterest, will not make the move over to his company's new owner.
"We think the Livestar team is a natural fit for Pinterest because of their commitment to inspiring people to do things in their everyday lives through social and expert recommendations," a Pinterest spokesperson said in a statement to CNET.
The digital scrapbooking site, fresh off landing $200 million in new funding, specifically said that it would use its substantial financial resources to pick up talent and technology, which means we should expect to see more buys like this one -- albeit less incestuous in nature.
Livestar sent the following note to members earlier today:
Our goal at Livestar is to help people find great recommendations from friends, critics, and strangers with similar taste. Over the last two years, the Livestar community has shared millions of ratings and reviews. Today we wanted to let you know that we'll be making our next move: the Livestar engineering team will be joining Pinterest.
If you're not familiar with Pinterest, it's an online tool that helps people discover things they love and inspires them to do these things in their everyday lives. We think this is aligned with what we're doing here at Livestar. While we are excited to join Pinterest, we are sad to also announce that Livestar will be shutting down immediately.
We are so thankful to all of you. We hope you discovered great recommendations and enjoyed sharing your own experiences with your friends and others. We have put all your reviews in the attached spreadsheet so that you can take them with you.
Thanks again for your support and contributions to Livestar. We will miss Livestar dearly, and we will especially miss reading all of your great reviews. We hope to see you on Pinterest soon!
Best,
The Livestar team