Facebook is buying Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup Storylane in what is a talent-oriented acquisition. Storylane wanted to become a new kind of story-telling platform much like Evan Williams’s Medium and Rebel Mouse. “We’re trying to build this library of human experience,” said founder Jonathan Gheller in an interview with my colleague Eliza Kern, when the service launched in October 2012.
It caught the eye of Internet giants and entered acquisitions talks with the likes of Yahoo and Facebook. Facebook clearly values the team and founder Gheller who is known for his ability to correlate data, identity and growth. The company had raised $2.8 million dollars from the likes of Balderton Capital, Sigma Partners, Ariel Poler, Mark Goines and bunch of other angel investors.
On his Storylane page, founder Gheller shared this note:
After a lot of discussions with Facebook about how our teams might work together to have even greater impact, we are announcing today that the Storylane team will be joining Facebook.
This is an exciting opportunity. Facebook’s mission of connecting the world has always been at the center of our work, and like our friends at Facebook, meaningful connections are what our team is most passionate about.
The beautiful stories you have decided to share with us are yours to keep and share in however way you want. We are building tools that will help you migrate the content to other services if you so desire. I will be in touch with you about those specific tools later, but I can confirm that Facebook is not acquiring any of your data; and we’re working to make sure you can migrate your content in a manageable way.
I want to thank our users. Your passion, sincerity and willingness to share, has made Storylane the incredible experience that exists today. We have learned so much from you. Your ideas and creativity will stay with us and inspire us on the next stage of our journey.
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