Is this a trend? Keyboard app Fleksy acquired by Pinterest

In what could be a trend of companies buying keyboard apps, social network Pinterest has acquired Fleksy.

The buyout was revealed by the Fleksy team in a blog post earlier this week, although financial details weren’t disclosed.

“Today we’re announcing some big news at Fleksy. Our team is joining Pinterest!” the team announced.

“As some of you may know, it’s a bit of nostalgic timing as this month marks four years since Fleksy first launched in the iOS store as a standalone app for our wonderful community of blind users – at a time when third party keyboards were not yet supported on the platform.”

The team reassured consumers that Fleksy would remain available to download on Android and iOS for the “foreseeable future”.

It also revealed plans to open parts of the keyboard app to the community.

“As a tribute to our incredible community of users we have made the decision to open-source some of the Fleksy components that the blind and visually impaired community grew to love. We trust you’ll do great things with it.”

It’s not the first time that a tech firm has acquired a keyboard app either.

Earlier this year, Microsoft bought Swiftkey for a cool US$250-million, the keyboard app using machine-learning and other high-tech methods to deliver word predictions.