Facebook Acquires Instant Messengers Hot Potato

A Hot Potato just landed in Facebook's lap and the social networking giant isn't about to pass it on. Facebook has acquired interest-based instant messaging service Hot Potato, a move that's expected to bolster its recently announced plans to offer a location-centric service.

The young start-up certainly costs far more than a bag of (potato) chips. Hot Potato came with a $10 million price tag, according to TechCrunch.

Hot Potato, which allows users to let their friends know about current activities, interests, or anything else they are engaged in and connect with other like-minded folks in real-time, plans to wrap up its operations in about a month and delete all user data. The company notes on its site that "No user data or account information will be kept by Facebook." And given some recent privacy debacles at Facebook, that's not a bad idea at all.