Facebook Purchases Pulp Developer Acrylic Software, Google Counters With Sparrow Acquisition

Acrylic Software, developers of the Pulp and Wallet apps for IOS devices announced on Friday that the team will join Facebook following the company’s acquisition by Zuckerberg and company.

Company founder Dustin MacDonald explains in a blog post on Friday that the team will move from Vancouver to San Francisco to join the Facebook design team. Acrylic says its Pulp and Wallet apps will still be for sale but will receive no further updates.

If you are unfamiliar with the company’s programs Pulp is a news reader with a similar concept to Flipboard but uses a newspaper format instead of a magazine setup. Wallet which is available for iOS and Mac based devices is a safeguard for critical data such as passwords, credit card numbers and license information.

Facebook was not the only company to buy a social media based firm on Friday, Google announced the acquisition of social email company Sparrow, a developer of a popular email client for both Mac and iOS based devices which integrates a users email box with a personalized feel courtesy of Facebook. Sparrow will also leave its own headquarters to join the Google team and just like Acrylic Software the Sparrow email app will remain on sale with no further major updates.

As the social web continues to become more segmented into product niches it is likely we’ll see many more social media startups get gobbled up by Google and Facebook as they battle it out for social networking dominance in an increasingly crowded market space.

Do you think Google and Facebook will be able to better their own products through their respective acquisitions?