Some of the new people brought in to upgrade the new messaging system, as well as some of the IP behind the new social aggregation layer, actually arrived courtesy of startup Zenbe, a company we first profiled back in 2008. Back then, Zenbe was primarily focused on aggregating various social and communications platforms into one interface. Starting to sound familiar?
Back in October, Zenbe officially shut down its webmail component, instead choosing to focus on some of its other social sharing tools. At the time, it seemed unusual that Zenbe would shutter its oldest product. In retrospect, it all makes some sense.
CEO Alan Chung discussed the new Facebook messaging product on the official Zenbe blog, noting, "We here at Zenbe are happy to have played a small role in this: a few months ago, three of our engineers joined Facebook as part of a talent acquisition."
To be clear -- Zenbe itself wasn't acquired -- just some of its engineers and the assets related to the Zenbe Mail product. Zenbe will continue to build new social products, including its upcoming app, Shindig, which will use the Facebook Social Graph to let people share photos with their friends in real-time.