Facebook Acquires Boutique Design Firm to Build ... ?

Facebook is bringing in some top-notch design talent through the “acqhire” of Toronto-based boutique firm Teehan+Lax.

The firm’s three partners — Jon Lax, Geoff Teehan, and David Gillis — are all joining Facebook’s design team in Menlo Park, Calif., as part of the deal. Teehan+Lax’s co-founders announced they were joining Facebook via a blog post Friday, and Facebook posted a welcome note on its design page, too.

As part of the move, Teehan+Lax is dissolving.

Facebook — and tech companies in general — hire new designers all the time, but rarely do companies make the arrival of said hires a public announcement. So what does Facebook have in store for the Teehan+Lax team? The company isn’t saying, and the design team didn’t specify, either.

But Teehan+Lax has built news-focused products in the past, including news readers and websites. Previous projects highlighted on the firm’s website include Medium, Prismatic (a feed-like news reader) and Readability (a Web-based reading platform). The firm also worked on the Globe and Mail’s digital products.

So a design firm with a history of building products for news consumption, huh? Facebook has a product that fits that mold — it’s called News Feed, and it’s the most important element of the Facebook platform.

Facebook already tried to redesign News Feed, but many of the design changes were never shipped. Perhaps the addition of Teehan+Lax is a sign that Facebook is ready to give it another try.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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