The news that Facebook has acquired bookmarking startup Spool appears to be another story of Facebook acquiring a developer to pinpoint their mobile strategy.

But does it align with their current trends?

It would appear so. Browsing app tool Spool – which enables users to bookmark content for both online and offline use and saves videos and content for future reference – is migrating to the Silicon Valley social giant.

“We are extremely excited to accelerate our vision and help Facebook’s users connect and share with the people in our lives,” wrote Spool’s official blog, alongside a previous post which spuriously mentioned that the start up had “decided to pursue [their] vision in a new way”.

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

The specific terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Facebook’s strategy: trends

Unsurprisingly, this has hit two big 2012 Facebook trends bang on.

Firstly it continues Mark Zuckerberg’s policy of bringing Facebook further into the mobile arena and, further, it continues the trend of Facebook swallowing start-ups.

Or to put it another way, Facebook appears to be buying out fresh companies for their talent, and not their technology.

A recent example came with the buying out of Israeli face recognition startup Face.com, only for them to cause uproar in the developer zone when the application programming interface (API) was taken off.

Similarly, the team from webcam eye-tracking company GazeHawk was acquired back in March yet without the technology.

But is this a similar case? Facebook has thus far kept silent on the issue.

Do you believe Facebook’s acquisition of a variety of mobile-based start ups will be beneficial in the long run? How do you think Spool’s workforce will be deployed at Facebook HQ?