Facebook is looking to shore up its mobile services with the acquisition of Little Eye Labs, a small Indian startup that helps analyze mobile app data. This marks yet another step as Facebook expands its mobile empire, an under-exploited platform that holds promise for companies to gain new users who don't own, or prefer to use, desktop computers.

This marks the first acquisition of an India-based company, according to The Wall Street Journal, though the procurement of Little Eye Labs has implications more global in scope for the world's largest social media company.

Throughout 2013, Facebook focused increasingly on mobile services and apps -- its user base that engages the social media network via computer has stayed steady, but its mobile user base has grown significantly, along with its mobile ad revenue.

For example, by July of 2013, Facebook mobile ad revenue had increased by 76 percent compared to the year before, and had shown steady growth quarter to quarter. And compared to this time two years ago, Facebook's mobile revenue has grown significantly, considering it was at 0 percent at the time.

Facebook, through its acquisition of Little Eye Labs, is "focused on producing useful and engaging mobile apps" according to a statement from the company's engineering manager to Mashable. "The Little Eye Labs technology will help us to continue improving our Android codebase to make more efficient, higher-performing apps."

According to its website, Little Eye Labs begun about a year ago, run "by a bunch of program analysis geeks" with the goal of providing data analysis and development tools for mobile app developers focusing on Google's Android platform. Basically, the company measures, analyzes, and optimizes app performance -- cutting out junk programming and streamlining the user's experience. The startup was founded in 2012 in Bangalore, India, by Kumar Rangarajan, with the help of an investment of $200,000 from a group of angel investors.

Ironically, the Little Eye Labs team gives credit to Google I/O, the developers conference, for its "big break." Now the entire team has been scooped up one of Google's chief competitors, and will be moving in toto to Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California. There, they'll work on improving the performance of Facebook's Android apps, which include Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Facebook Pages Manager, and the intensely hyped, and much maligned, Facebook Home Android UI-layering app.


Perhaps Little Eye Labs can fix whatever is broken with Home.

Facebook is the top seller of online ads, after Google, and plans to continue to reach out to the ever-expanding world of mobile internet. Researcher EMarketer Inc., for example, says that money spent on mobile ads by U.S. companies is expected to account for 23 percent of all digital ads, an increase of 11 percent from 2012.

Mobile is the primary medium where expansion into never-before tapped low-income markets in the first world and developing countries continues. Part of that strategy for Facebook includes "Internet.org," a multi-company initiative to expand the mobile internet into developing countries, like in Latin America.

And part of Internet.org's plan is "A Focus on Efficiency," which centers on slimming down the amount of data that mobile apps (like Facebook) require in order to lower the barrier of entry for people who have never used the internet, much less social media, before. Buying a mobile app efficiency company, which focuses on the most common world-wide OS, Android, is certainly another move in that direction.