Under the terms of the deal Silicon Valley-based friend.ly will be focusing on new projects at Facebook but will continue to operate as a separate service.

Financial terms of the deal were undisclosed. However the transaction takes Facebook’s M&A count during 2011 to six, with the only disclosed purchase being the $60 million buy of Israeli mobile app developer Snaptu.

According to a blog post on the friend.ly website, the business was started two years ago to ‘enhance your social networking experience by creating a fun, easy way to express yourself and meet new people by answering questions’.

Prior to the acquisition friend.ly received $5 million in a Series A fundraising from investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Balderton Capital.

Founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, once revealed that the social network’s acquisition strategy is different to most.

Zuckerberg said: ‘We have not once bought a company for the company. We buy companies to get excellent people…in order to have a really entrepreneurial culture one of the key things is to make sure we’re recruiting the best people.

‘One of the ways to do this is to focus on acquiring companies with great founders.’