Facebook Acquires Social Q&A Service Friend.ly — Team To Work On New Things, But Service Will Stay Open

The acquisitions continue for Facebook. Last week, the social network bought Friend.ly, the social question and answer service, both sides confirm today.

Friend.ly has more details in their blog post here. Meanwhile, Facebook has this to say on the deal:

We’re excited to announce that we recently acquired friend.ly, a Silicon Valley startup that created a really compelling way for people to express themselves and meet others through answering questions. We’ve admired the team’s efforts for some time now, and we’re looking forward to having Ed and his colleagues make a big impact on the way millions of people connect and engage with each other on Facebook.

Of note, the Friend.ly team says that they’ll be working on “new projects” at Facebook. But they also say that Friend.ly will continue to operate as a service. Facebook has a history of acquiring services just for their talent and shutting down old products, but in some cases, like FriendFeed, they’ve allowed them to stay open. It appears that will be happening here as well (Update: Facebook confirms). At least for now.

As Inside Facebook noted back in April, Friend.ly was able to gain a ton of users on top of Facebook’s graph very quickly.

Friend.ly had raised $5 million in funding from Lightspeed Ventures, Balderton Capital, SoftTechVC, and a range of angels.