Facebook app firm is sold just four years since launch
Tech City, the the high tech hub set up around East London’s Shoreditch, has witnessed its first successful float-off with the sale of Facebook application developer iPlatform.
Set up by entrepreneurs Joshua March and Dan Lester in 2008 shortly after Facebook allowed outside developers to create software on the website, the start-up has been sold to Irish marketing firm Betapond for an undisclosed sum.
iPlatform designs social apps for business customers such as McDonalds and The Economist and was the first UK firm to get Facebook’s recognition as a preferred marketing developer.
Its sale is also a success for the UK goverment’s faith in the Tech City initiative where IT giants such as Cisco, Facebook, Google, Intel have committed to invest.
Around 30 people will be employed by iPlatform’s new owners Betapond, which also has offices in Dublin and San Jose, in London.
* Instagram, the photo-sharing app firm bought for $1 billion by Facebook in April 2012, has overtaken Twitter in the US for daily visitor numbers following a summer boom. In August users were found to have spent about eight minutes daily using the app compared to about five-and-a half minutes spent reading and updating Twitter, according to data from analytics firm comScore.
