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Thursday, April 25, 2024
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Facebook buys fitness tracker startup behind Moves

By  Sun-Times Wire
   
SHARE Facebook buys fitness tracker startup behind Moves

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Facebook acquired the startup behind the popular fitness tracking app Moves as it expands beyond its namesake service into a company with multiple, differentiated mobile apps.

The world’s largest online social network will keep running the service separately.

Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook said Thursday it bought ProtoGeo Oy, the Finnish company behind the app, for an undisclosed sum.

Launched in 2013, the Moves app has been downloaded 4 million times on Android phones and the iPhone. It lets people automatically track their runs, walks or bike rides and plots the user’s routes on a map.

To move beyond its core service, Facebook is developing and acquiring different kinds of apps. This year, it announced a $19 billion deal for mobile messaging service WhatsApp and launched the news reader app Paper.

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