This week social networking giant Facebook has announced the acquisition of Parse, a cloud-based platform providing tools for mobile app developers.
Facebook will,be buying the Parse business outright, but Parse will
continue to operate and offer its services, which are currently used in
over 60,000 applications. 
The Parse business offers backend services, data storage, social
integration tools and other features to make it easier for app to be
built across different platforms that scale more efficiently. Facebook
Director of Developer Products Doug Purdy explained in a blog post:
"We want to enable developers to rapidly build apps that span
mobile platforms and devices. Parse makes this possible by allowing
developers to work with native objects that provide backend services for
data storage, notifications, user management, and more. This removes
the need to manage servers and a complex infrastructure, so you can
simply focus on building great user experiences.”
Parse has explained that the acquisition by Facebook will not change
existing customers’ contracts or affect their apps in any way, and users
will not be required to use Facebook functionality.
Source: Inside Facebook | 