Facebook’s mobile shopping spree: First Instagram, now Tagtile

Facebook acquired another mobile startup Friday, just in time for the rollout of its Facebook Offers feature. The newly purchased company, Tagtile, focuses on customer rewards and mobile marketing.

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Tagtile helps physical stores connect to customers over smartphones. Businesses install a small Tagtile cube, which visiting customers can tap their phone on to get rewards points and discounts. Shoppers must download the Tagtile app first (available on iPhone and Android), which then pushes targeted marketing material to their phone based on stores they visit. The box also provides data to the business to help them find out what marketing efforts actually work, as well as how many people are using the service.

The company will run its normal service for the time being, thought it is no longer accepting new business. Tagtile also notes that its offerings will eventually cease since “Tagtile as it exists today won’t be part of what we do at Facebook,” according to a post by the company. It seems the team does hope to be able to expand the product within Facebook, however, and “do it on a much, much bigger scale that we could have on our own.”

Facebook released its Offers product today, which allows customers to purchase deals directly from their news feed. These can be redeemed using Facebook’s mobile app at the store. Whether Tagtile’s technology and team will be integrated into this area of Facebook commerce remains to be seen.

The social network also recently acquired mobile photo app Instagram for a whopping $1 billion. Facebook is rightfully getting more focused on its mobile front. Terms of the Tagtile acquisition have not been released.

hat tip TechCrunch