Facebook Acquires Video Encoder QuickFire for Undisclosed Amount
Social network Facebook acquired QuickFire Networks, a startup that specializes in video encoding, on Thursday for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition is another step in Facebook's transformation to online video powerhouse. QuickFire's proprietary low-bandwidth video encoding technology will help Facebook reduce file sizes, stream smaller files to its growing base of mobile viewers, help mobile viewers avoid data cap issues, and let videos load faster on any device.
According to a note on the QuickFire site, the company will now wind down operations, and "key members" will join Facebook, writes company CEO Craig Y. Lee. The company is based in San Diego, California. The purchase seems to be as much about acqui-hiring encoding pros as gaining the company's proprietary technology. Clearly, Facebook has no interest in running QuickFire as a business.
TechCrunch reports that QuickFire's proprietary technology "relied on custom motherboards built to accommodate 11 high-end Intel Core i7 processors. Custom software let these processors work in unison, and a layer on top of that let the startup massively scale up by distributing work among multiple motherboards."
Facebook now streams over one billion video views each day, the QuickFire note says. Facebook videos auto-start, a change the company put in place last year.
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