Dive Brief:

• Wayfair has acquired Trumpit, a startup whose group photo messaging application has been compared to Snapchat — technology that potentially could be used to expand the online furniture retailer's customer service options on its own mobile app.
• The acquisition gives Wayfair access to Trumpit’s intellectual property. Wayfair also lands seven new employees as part of the deal — including co-founders Bill Gianoukos, Carl Nehme and Nick Lizotte — with the right to hire more Trumpit staff.
• The deal marks Wayfair's third acquisition, following the company's 2013 acquisition of DwellStudio and its 2015 acquihire of CustomMade. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Dive Insight:

The acquisition appears to mark the end of Trumpit's run as a standalone app, with downloads eclipsing the 750,000 mark. It seems like a lot of users will be left hanging and have to move onto something else while Trumpit likely becomes more of a feature or function within Wayfair's overall customer support structure.

While TechCrunch notes that Trumpit's app may have "had trouble retaining users and keeping them engaged," this should not matter so much to Wayfair if it mainly wants to use the technology to allow customers and its support staff exchange photo and video messages as needed during customer service exchanges.

It also sounds like Wayfair was definitely interested in the team behind Trumpit, and this deal is similar in some ways to its acquisition of CustomMade. Wayfair is bundling together a lot of tech talent in different emerging sectors to make more of a push on the technology front in hopes of boosting its bottom line: The retailer recently rolled out a virtual reality app called Patio Playground, providing more proof of its technology interests.

Separately this week, Wayfair announced it had hired a new vice president of operations for product innovation, Doran Robinson, so it will be interesting to see how that new executive works to make sense of Wayfair's technology investments. More retailers are spending more on technology these days to ultimately either grow revenue in new directions, save money or both. Wayfair recently reported a widening quarterly loss, so it's under some pressure to do something to change its financial fortunes.