Facebook acquires Little Eye Labs for improved Android development
If you didn’t believe the Facebook team wasn’t making nice on its promise to focus more on quality Android development, perhaps their latest acquisition will make you a believer. India-based Little Eye Labs has announced that they have been acquired by the social networking giant for an undisclosed sum (though sources tell TechCrunch that the deal was for anywhere between $10 million and $15 million.
What does Little Eye do? It’s a suite of development tools for developers who want to keep tabs on their apps’ performance, giving them a suite of tools such as resource consumption trends, performance monitors, fine details about events and listeners, detailed reports and even a performance score.
It’s a sensible move for Facebook considering they are often bashed about their app’s poor performance. Even after making the app an all native, non-HTML experience, Facebook for Android could use some vast improvements in these areas.
The company is known to have recently toyed with the idea of using a Holo-based user interface, though they have yet to officially reveal the final product. Several users in the Facebook alpha test have already reportedly seen quick glimpses of the user interface, but their apps were reverted back to the original after they exit and re-enter the app.
We’ve already gotten a bit of an idea of what they can do with Holo thanks to the latest version of the Facebook Messenger. We’re all smiles about that particular app, so getting an overhaul for the full Facebook experience will be welcomed with open arms. Let’s hope they put their newly-acquired tools to good use in the near future by bringing us a Facebook app that doesn’t suck.
[via Little Eye]