Facebook Acquires Tagtile’s Team of Customer-Loyalty App

Facebook Inc. is acquiring the team of developers behind customer-loyalty application Tagtile, adding to its expertise in mobile software.

“We’re happy to confirm that Tagtile’s founders are joining Facebook, and that Facebook is acquiring substantially all of the company’s assets,” Menlo Park, California-based Facebook said today in an e-mailed statement. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

The world’s largest social-networking service is bolstering its talent pool in preparation to take the company public this year. The Tagtile deal follows Facebook’s $1 billion planned acquisition of mobile photo app Instagram, announced earlier this week.

The co-founders of San Francisco startup Tagtile, Abheek Anand and Soham Mazumdar, are engineers with experience working at VMware Inc.) and Google Inc., according to their website.

Facebook also announced today that businesses can send people coupons that consumers then print out or redeem using mobile phones, as Bloomberg stated.

The company is preparing to raise $5 billion in its initial public offering, which would the biggest Internet IPO ever. Facebook will be valued at as much as $100 billion in the stock sale, people familiar with the matter have said.