Facebook acquires Finnish fitness software company ProtoGeo Oy

To say that Facebook has a lot of information about its users is a bit of an understatement. The social giant knows about countless birthdays, relationships, jobs and vacations. And now, it’s added your workout habits to the list. Facebook just acquired a Finnish startup called ProtoGeo Oy for an undisclosed sum. The Helsinki-based company is two years old and is the creator a popular a fitness app called Moves. The app launched last year has been downloaded 4 million times. 

The fitness app market just gained another giant competitor with deep pockets. Facebook plans to acquire ProtoGeo Oy, a Finnish software company that’s most well-known for making fitness tracker app Moves, ProtoGeo Oy said on Thursday. Moves is able to record a wide range of activities in addition to tracking the fitness app standbys of walking, biking, and running. For instance, it can identifiy whether a user is riding on public transit. The app requires no external hardware, but instead uses sensors already built into smartphones. Moves does most of its data processing remotely, on ProtoGeo’s servers, and a Facebook spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal that the algorithm that determines the different kind of activities is protected by a patent.