Facebook acquires mobile app maker acrylic

The engineer behind Canadian startup Acrylic said Friday that he was closing up his one-man shop and joining the design team at leading social network Facebook. Facebook confirmed that it has bought Acrylic in an "acqui-hire" that brings on board founder Dustin MacDonald, the creator of mobile gadget applications for newsfeeds and digital wallets. "Facebook is an invaluable service that we all use daily, and a company I believe is one of the most innovative and important around today," MacDonald said in a blog post announcing his move to California. "After visiting late last year, I discovered that we shared many of the same core product design goals and principles, and it soon became obvious that it was a natural fit." Acrylic's best-known applications -- Wallet and Newsfeed -- were not acquired by Facebook in the deal. Buying promising startups for the talent and not its products has become common in the competitive Internet technology world. Facebook recently bought startups Spool and TagTile in "talent acquisitions" aimed at helping it stay in synch with users as they shift increasingly to using smartphones and tablet computers.