Facebook Expands Mobile App Portfolio with 'Moves' Fitness App Acquisition

Facebook today announced that it is acquiring mobile fitness app developer ProtoGeo Oy, reports the Wall Street Journal. The Helsinki-based company was founded in January 2012 and launched its first and only app, Moves [iTunes] one year later. The fitness tracking app debuted first for the iPhone and was made available for Android in August of 2013. It is popular, accruing 4 million downloads across both mobile platforms.

In a post on its website, ProtoGeo confirms Moves will continue to operate as a standalone app and adds that the company has no plans to share its fitness data with Facebook's social network.

Today, we're delighted to announce that Facebook has acquired our company and the Moves app. Since we launched Moves, we’ve been focused on running a simple and clean activity diary that millions of people have enjoyed using.

Now, we’re joining Facebook’s talented team to work on building and improving their products and services with a shared mission of supporting simple, efficient tools for more than a billion people.

For those of you that use the Moves app – the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook.

Moves stand out from competing fitness apps by automating the tedious process of data entry, which can be a hindrance to the effective use of a fitness tracking app. Move imports data from a variety of third-party apps and automatically detects activities such as entering the gym, going out to lunch or riding on public transit. On the iPhone, Moves supports Apple's M7 motion co-processor, which is available in the iPhone 5s.

This acquisition by Facebook is one of several high-profile app purchases by the social network as the company continues its expansion into the mobile app market. Moves will join Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Paper, all of which operate as stand-alone apps under the Facebook umbrella.

The amount Facebook paid to acquire ProtoGeo was not revealed, but a Facebook spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that the amount is "nowhere near the size of other acquisitions the company has made in recent months." Facebook announced earlier this year it was acquiring mobile messenger WhatsApp for $19 billion and Oculus Rift for $2 billion.