Localytics, the Boston-based mobile engagement platform, has acquired Berlin’s Tapglue, which offered mobile app developers an API and backend service to enable them to easily add social features to their apps. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed.
In what I’m going to dub as at least partly an acqui-hire, the purchase sees Localytics open a new Berlin office — its second in Europe, adding to an existing presence in London — to be led by the Tapglue team.
Meanwhile, the Tapglue platform is being shuttered, though it will live on as an open source offering and made available for free to the mobile developer community.
Of note, the acquisition signals the merger of two Techstars Boston startup accelerator program graduates: Localytics graduated in 2009, and Tapglue in 2016.
Tapglue was founded in 2015 by Norman Wiese and Onur Akpolat to make it easier for developers to add a social layer and other engagement features to their apps. This included all of the heavy-lifting inherent when integrating the social graph of existing social networks, such as Facebook, and adding native social networking features to an app.
“[Localytics] acquired the tech and team,” Wiese told me in an email. “The managed Tapglue platform won’t be continued though, it will be available completely open source moving forward, making it the most comprehensive open-source platform for social engagement features”.
Wiese also says that Tapglue and Localytics began conversations last year while the former was in the middle of fundraising for its next round. “Localytics got interested in acquiring us and the idea of joining forces got more concrete,” he says.
“After several conversations it got clear to the Tapglue team that joining Localytics is a great opportunity to achieve our goals in a stronger setup, with more resources at hand and at global scale”.
To that end, I’m told that Germany, and specifically Berlin, is currently one of the most important ecosystems for Localytics in Europe. “They had been thinking about opening a presence for a while. The acquisition opportunity made this decision much easier as they could acquire a strong local team with an existing network and client base,” adds Wiese.
