[Updated] Facebook to Acquire Indian Startup Little Eye Labs. Twitter Is Not Far Behind Either.

Update:

Indian Startup Little Eye Labs has confirmed it acquisition by Facebook. With this acquisition, Little Eye Labs will join forces with Facebook to take its mobile development to the next level! This is Facebook's first acquisition of an Indian company, the Startup said in an announcement on their site.

Click here to read more: Little Eye Labs Confirms Its Acquisition By Facebook

December 4, 2013: Since its inception Facebook has always been on the lookout to expand its horizons, increase its reach and connect. In the past, Facebook has acquired Snaptu from Israel, Sofa from Amsterdam, Octazen from Kula Lumpur and now they have come much closer to home by showing interest in Little Eye Labs, a Bangalore based Startup.

Although the talks are still under-way, various reports suggest that the deal is sealed and this will be Facebook’s first Indian acquisition. The deal is being facilitated by Indian Software Products Industry Roundtable (iSpirt) and under its M&A connect programme.

Little Eye Labs, is a performance analysis tool for Android developers helping them analyze and optimize Android Apps. They help in monitoring apps built for Android 2.3 onwards, map resource consumption by the Android device for various apps and a whole lot more features. New on the block, they have recently introduced techniques to keep tabs on the performance score and thread views of various apps on the device.

The company has been backed by GSF Accelerator and Venture East.

With the flood of Android devices in the market and increase in the number of Android apps, developers would love to have a tool like the Little Eye Lab to help them improve their products. Facebook, known for its foresight into social expansion, buys into companies that are valuable to its contribution towards Facebook and give its users a whole new experience.

A year back the social media giant bought Instagram for a whopping $ 1 billion and very recently even got turned down by Snapchat who were offered a $ 3 billion dollar (all cash) deal. With over 40 acquisitions in the kitty, who knows what Facebook will be up to next? We do wish Little Eye Labs all the very best.

On the other hand, Twitter also is reportedly now in talks to acquire another Indian startup, Frrole.

Started by Amarpreet Kalkat in 2011, Frrole is a big data startup based in Bangalore, that helps to discover the most insightful and relevant information from Twitter conversations. Its Social Intelligence platform is powered by a semantic engine with the capability to mine the most relevant social data in real-time.

Frrole drills down this data further by providing numerous filters based on demographics, keywords and user-accounts to help you find the most precise information

Frrole is a part of Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in Banglaore. It has been working in private beta for some time with clients such as Dexetra, Sqoops and Explara. Frrole claims to have reached more than half a million users a month since its beta launch in April last year. Started with 20 cities, they now covers more than 55 cities in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, India and Singapore, and aims to cover over 100 cities worldwide in the near future.

Twitter has been partnering with a lot of Media channels lately. In 2011, Twitter acquired BackType, a social analytics platform that has been helping the microblogging site with it’s develop tools for its publisher partners. Earlier this year, it acquired BlueFin Labs, a social TV analytics company, which helps Twitter in analyzing the trending shows, or TV moments, that would enable brands to use them for their own advertising efforts. It also acquired Trendrr, the social TV tracking service.

Frrole had launched an enterprise offering for the media and entertainment industry to be able to mine content from Twitter. Frrole’s acquisition could help Twitter’s advertisers to measure and engage their audience across both screens using the Frrole suite of products.

Also, Twitter has been acquiring analytics firms to boost its offerings. It needs improve its efforts in the Big Data sector in order to provide better analytics to advertisers.

With global social networking giants looking eagerly towards Indian tech startups, the scene is definitely getting hotter. Morover, it's great to see Indian tech startups doing path-breaking work in the social media sphere.