Pieceable is acquired by Facebook

I'm actually really happy when acquisitions go down like this. That is, when they keep their product running long enough to make the transition easy (i.e., not Meebo) and open source the product.

Particularly that last piece because it opens up the market to be commoditized. The secret sauce of getting a web-based viewer of a remote iPhone Simulator session is now available for anyone. And now a bunch of competing services will likely pop up (because all the hard work is done) and that means a price war. The consumers of these services are ultimately the big winner.

I hope more deals like this happen.

I feel like this acquisition is related to Facebook App Center (launched last week) somehow. They didn't have links or screenshots for iPhone apps, but they do for Android apps. I was curious why they did not have a screenshot area/App Store link field for iPhone apps.

I could have sworn that during the Instagram acquisition that Facebook wasn't going to "make a habit" out of acquisitions.

Great work Fred! Happy to be a client and a supporter of what you guys have pulled off. Good stuff!

My guess would be, it would be hard to continue with the same vision as the original cofounders. I think this rings true even more in a startup because the focus and vision are constantly being refined versus an already established company. So that being said, it would be hard for a team to come in and just resume development on the technical side and product development side whilst keeping the same vision and focus as the original founders. It's definitely possible but it just seems like it would be a lot of hassle and time on the founders side to go through that process.