Facebook Buys Glancee Location-Based Tool for Undisclosed Price

Facebook Inc. (FB), the world’s most popular social network, is acquiring Glancee, a mobile service that helps users find and connect with people based on their locations.

The company, based in Menlo Park, California, announced the acquisition in an e-mailed statement. It didn’t disclose terms.

Facebook, which plans to raise as much as $11.8 billion in an initial public offering, is using acquisitions to fuel growth in services aimed at mobile users. The company said last month that it’s buying Instagram, a mobile photo-sharing service, for about $1 billion.

Glancee lets users explore profiles of people nearby and receive notifications of people who have common friends or mutual interests.

Glancee, founded in 2010, includes three co-founders, Andrea Vaccari, Alberto Tretti and Gabriel Grise.

With the initial public offering, Facebook will seek a market value of as much as $96 billion, offering shares at $28 to $35 each, a regulatory filing showed this week. Facebook has more than 900 million users.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Womack in San Francisco at bwomack1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net