Facebook has hired the mobile team behind the startup application development provider, Spool, in what appears to be the latest acquisition for social network.  This talent buy is largely in part to expand its technical staff.

Although the social network is hiring all of Spool’s employees, the company didn’t comment on whether it has acquired whole of the company or only hiring the mobile team.

“The Spool team has deep expertise in mobile software development and a passion for making content easy to consume,” Facebook said in a statement over the weekend. “We’re excited for the team to join and accelerate their vision at Facebook.”

Founded in late 2010 by Avichal Garg, Spool is a mobile application available on the App Store, which allows you to save video and other contents for future reference. Soon before the acquisition, Spool had informed users that their services were closed down and advised them to save their content directly to their devices and computers, or to other services.

“We started Spool to make content easy to consume on a mobile device. To accomplish this, we built some very sophisticated technology and developed a deep expertise in mobile software development,” Spool said in a blog post on Saturday. “We are proud to announce that today we will be pursuing our vision as a part of Facebook.”

Monetize Social-Mobile Content

It is also not clear whether Mark Zuckerberg will use the technology developed by Spool or if he’s simply recruiting the mobile team. Yet, it would seem that Zuckerberg is more interested in the skills of Spool’s developer to monetize mobile content rather than technology.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Zuckerberg said that he is progressing with Facebook’s total change for mobile applications. Although a mobile setup is a challenging job for Facebook, the company is rightly moving in that direction. Starting with the launch of the App Center in June, Facebook had since acquired Instagram for $1 billion; weeks later, Facebook purchased the similar Lightbox, followed by mobile gifting app provider Karma, social discovery app Glancee and face recognition provider for mobile devices Face.com.

This type of service represents the future of the social and mobile network as it is the main axis of its evolution. Facebook’s longtime partner Microsoft recently brought Yammer for $1.2 billion to add best-in-class enterprise social networking solutions to Microsoft’s growing portfolio of complementary social and cloud services.

Microsoft and Facebook have a formidable rival in Google, who’s never been one to shy away from acquisitions. The company last month made several talent buys and other acquisitions in mobile and social space.  First there was Meebo, in order to expand their social reach with better ways to help users share content and connect with others across the Web.  Then the search giant acquired Quickoffice, developer of the eponymous mobile productivity suite to take on Microsoft’s Office for Apple iOS. Google is hoping to make Google Docs even better with Quickoffice integration before Windows 8 drops.

Alternatives to Spool

While Spool is shutting down its innovative bookmarking service, users can check out alternatives to Spool to store their content. Although there are plenty of services available, apps like Pocket, Instapaper and Readability offer the closest in terms of functionality and usability.

Instapaper, the popular content consumption service, lets you saves web content for later offline reading either on your PC, iPhone, iPad, iPad Touch and Kindle e-book readers. The simple app facilitates easy reading of long text content.

Pocket App, formerly Read it Later, adds extra layer by adding articles, videos or pretty much anything to view later. The app provides saving options directly from your browser or from apps like Twitter, Flipboard, Pulse and Zite.  Moreover, the app also works on Android devices and tablets.

Like Instapaper and Pocket, Readability‘s mobile and web apps eliminates online clutter and saves web articles in a comfortable reading view for later use on your computer, smartphone or tablet. In addition, the app provides Readability buttons, an API and keys to your site or blog so as to build full-featured reading content.