Facebook nabs the team behind design group Hot Studio, but won’t acquire its assets

Today Facebook and Hot Studio announced that the team behind the design and user experience company would be joining the social giant.

Though the term ‘acquihire’ wasn’t directly employed, the terms of the deal are not ambiguous: “Facebook has agreed to acquire the talent behind Hot Studio,” the smaller company stated.

Facebook, citing work between the two companies, stated that it “recognized the synergy between [the] teams.” To pick up the smaller company’s employees must not have been too hard a decision.

The social network went on to state that the Hot Studio crew will help it “build amazing tools that help the brands and businesses that use Facebook.” Facebook, a company in the middle of a design transition to a mobile-first perspective needs every hand it can to help it shape its product for the new digital world.

Hot Studio will unwind its commitments to other clients in the coming few months, before joining Facebook on a full-time basis. Facebook describes the transition as “careful and deliberate.” I’d add respectful to the mix, as it will allow Hot Studio to disengage more gracefully than a different sort of transition might.

Facebook has been building out its team through a handful of “acqui-hires”, or talent-based acquisitions. Last week, Storylane announced that it had been picked up by the social networking giant.

Facebook has made several significant changes to its product in recent months, such as Graph Search, a revamped news feed and a one-column timeline. More changes are in the works, as reports emerged earlier today that Facebook is working on the addition of Twitter-like hashtag support to its platform.

Image credit: AFP / Getty Images