Facebook buys Tagtile

Facebook has confirmed that it has bought a San Francisco start-up that helps merchants court shoppers with rewards for checking in with smartphones during visits, The Economic Times reports.

Facebook's acquisition of Tagtile, for an undisclosed sum, came on the heels of a billion-dollar deal to acquire the start-up behind the wildly popular smartphone photo-sharing application, Instagram.

“We're happy to confirm that Tagtile's founders are joining Facebook, and that Facebook is acquiring all of the company's assets,” the social network said in reply to an AFP inquiry. “We've admired the engineering team's efforts for some time now.”

According to eWeek, Tagtile, which joined the Facebook team on 13 April, is both a cloud application and piece of hardware called the Tagtile Cube for businesses.

Customers buying an item at a Tagtile-affiliated store or restaurant tap their iOS or Android phones on the Cube as they are leaving.

Then, should they choose to do so, they can share their enjoyment of the business with their friends with the tap of a button. It therefore follows that if the customer is not satisfied, that not-so-good comments may also be networked out to the world.

The co-founders of Tagtile, Abheek Anand and Soham Mazumdar, are engineers with experience working at VMware and Google, according to their Web site, Bloomberg reveals.

Facebook also revealed last week that businesses can send people coupons that consumers then print out or redeem using mobile phones.

The company is preparing to raise $5 billion in its initial public offering (IPO), which would be the biggest Internet IPO ever. Facebook will be valued at as much as $100 billion in the stock sale, people familiar with the matter have said.