Facebook hired 'Roundup' chief executive Lior Gonnen

By Money Times

Nov 09, 2015 02:25 AM EST

Facebook hires software engineer Lior Gonnen, the founder and chief executive of Android news app Roundup.

Venture Beat reported Facebook brought Gonnen in at their Menlo Park, Californian headquarters. Roundup is not a very popular app, but it is a pretty good app. There are no official announcements whether Facebook has acquired Gonnen's app or not, but hiring the engineer has been officially confirmed.

Gonnen's Roundup lets users customize their news feed articles by choosing media outlets and integrating their Twitter accounts, and then selecting "Roundup Highlights." After that, the user will see multiple articles and an indicator on how long will each take to read. Users can bookmark the articles to share and read later. The app can also send the user notification, and save content to read offline.

On another note, The New York Times reported that Facebook reported Wednesday another impressive revenue growth. The giant social media company's third quarter revenue went up 41 percent to $4.5 billion. Its net profit increased 11 percent to $896 million.

According to BBC News, the increase in revenue is brought by a growth in monthly users. With more users, advertising will be more robust. Investors are eager to see how the social media's increasing focus on video is going to pay off.  Facebook has eight billion video views every day from its 500 million users. Last April the social media only had four billion. The company is also planning to boost advertising revenue for Whatsapp and Instagram. Investors want to see some specific plans on these projects.

The increase in revenue comes with a surge in expenses. The company spent $3 billion in the third quarter. That is a 62 percent increased compared to last year. This means Facebook's spending growth is faster than its sales growth. There are no signs of the company slowing down on spending as it invests more on marketing, new technologies and hiring new talents.

Roundup is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, having its debut  last year.  The news app's latest update on the Google PLay Store was on June 8 and received 10,000-50,000 installs.

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