Facebook acquires staff behind webcam eye-tracking startup GazeHawk

IDG News Service - Facebook is acquiring the team at webcam eye-tracking startup GazeHawk, but not its product and technology, GazeHawk said Thursday.

The Mountain View, Calif., company, which uses webcams to assess how volunteers look at websites, advertisements, or images on their computer screens, said on its website that the team moving to Facebook will work on projects unrelated to GazeHawk, most likely on product and backend engineering.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In a similar deal, Facebook acquired earlier this month the team behind file-transfer startup Caffeinated Mind, which offered an on-demand peer-to-peer file sharing system. Facebook said the staff from Caffeinated Mind will work on tools that will help its employees share files internally.

While Caffeinated Mind said it would be closing down its services, GazeHawk believes it has developed a best-of-class technology that does not exist anywhere else, and is committed to seeing it continue to provide benefits to others, company founders Brian Krausz and Joe Gershenson wrote in a blog post.

"We are currently exploring different options for GazeHawk, including selling the product/technology to another company. Discussions about this are still ongoing," Krausz said in an email.

Facebook did not immediately comment on the acquisition.