Today half of the ten-person team behind the Fleksy keyboard app, known for being accessible to blind smartphone users, has been acquired by Pinterest.
Pinterest announced in a release sent to MobileSyrup that the Fleksy team members will be joining its company in mobile and mobile platform engineering roles. They will work on “a variety of mobile focused projects such as growth, core consumer features, and platform infrastructure.”
The other half of the team decided to part ways with the Fleksy group joining Pinterest.
Says Pinterest: “In our experience, it’s pretty typical with acquisitions for some members of a team to join and for others to pursue opportunities elsewhere.”
Fleksy differs greatly from the traditional iPhone and Android keyboard: it uses a combination of above-key suggestions, gestures and very accurate autocorrect to improve the typing experience. On its website the company states it was the first to facilitate blind typing on a smartphone as well as the first third-party keyboard on a smartwatch.
A blog post on the Fleksy website says the standalone app will remain on app marketplaces for the foreseeable future, but Pinterest notes it will receive “minimal/limited” updates. Fleksy plans, however, to open-source some of the app’s accessibility components that are helpful to the blind and visually impaired community
Pinterest also confirms it will not gain the technology behind the Fleksy keyboard.
“We’re excited to join the world-class team at Pinterest where we’ll continue working on intuitive content discovery experiences on mobile. We’ll be bringing our expertise on both iOS and Android to join Pinterest in developing the most robust, beautiful and engaging ways to help people discover ideas,” said Fleksy founder and CEO Kosta Eleftheriou.
Fleksy is used by millions of people in over 170 countries and more than 45 languages.
Related reading: Google takes on Pinterest and Flipboard with new Google+ Collections feature
[source]Fleksy[/source]
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
