Social network king Facebook has agreed to purchase link-sharing service Branch and sister service Potluck. Ironically enough, Branch CEO Josh Miller announced the acquisition via Facebook post earlier today but stopped short of disclosing a purchase price.
The startup was able to raise $2 million early on from a number of investors including SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, John Borthwick from Betaworks, Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams and Jason Goldman. A person familiar with the acquisition pegged the deal at around $15 million, we're told.
Interestingly enough, Miller penned a blog post on Medium about Facebook just over a year ago where he concluded that the social network may have an irreversibly bad brand. He changed his tune last month, however, with another Medium post titled "Why I'm Bullish On Facebook." It's unclear if the post was written before he knew he'd be selling out to Facebook, but it's interesting nevertheless.
Miller said the nine person team will remain at their headquarters in New York but moving forward, they will start a new team within their new employer known as Conversations. The goal of the new branch, he noted, is to help users connect around shared interests. It'll be interesting to see how Facebook integrates such a feature into their existing platform.
We're also hearing that both Branch and Potluck will live on outside of Facebook but as we've seen with other startup acquisitions, exactly how long they may hang around certainly remains to be seen.