Facebook has followed-up its US$1 billion acquisition of Instagram with the hiring of the team behind another photo-sharing app, Lightbox.

In a statement on its website, Lightbox founders Thai Tran and Nilesh Patel said that the service will close on 15 June when the team will transfer to Facebook.

But they stressed that the “Facebook is not acquiring the company or any of the user data hosted on Lightbox.com,” suggesting that Facebook’s move is geared more towards acquiring Lightbox’s engineering talent to boost its apps strategy.

The Lightbox service ran as an Android and HTML5 app and was often seen as an alternative to Instagram, which until recently was only available on iOS.

The timing of the deal comes just a few days before Facebook’s much-anticipated IPO, which could value the social networking giant at US$100 billion.

Launched last summer, Lightbox has been funded to the tune of US$1.2 million from the likes of Index Ventures, Accel Partners, SV Angel and 500 Startups.