Google has acquired Katango, a startup that has developed advance people-sorting algorithms, in order to improve the quality of Google+ Circles.
"Katango was founded a little over a year ago to develop social algorithms that improve people's online social interaction," the company said in an announcement. "We're excited to join the Google+ team and carry on fulfilling that mission. Google+ is seeing tremendous momentum, so it's a perfect time to join and make Circles smarter for millions of people."
Katango, previously known as CafeBots, was the first company funded by the Kleiner Perkins sFund. Earlier this year, the company launched an iPhone app to make it easier to message groups of people across Facebook, email and SMS.
The company's strength is in its algorithms for social organization. Katango uses social cues to group a user's friends and colleagues. Its technology is significantly more advanced than the code behind Facebook's Smart Lists.
Google could well use that technology to improve its social network. Circles, the Google+ feature that lets users share content with different groups such as friends, family or colleagues, is central to Google+'s design. But sorting friends into circles is a tedious affair. Katango should make that process far less painful.
“We were impressed by the Katango team’s innovative approach to making your social circles smarter, and we think they’ll be a great addition to the Google+ team,” a Google spokesperson told Mashable. Google also announced on Thursday that it had acquired Apture to add better search context technology to Chrome.
We have a few screenshots of what Katango was working on before the acquisition. Check them out and let us know what you think of Google's newest purchase in the comments.