• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, November 11, 2011

Confirming earlier reports, Google just copped to acquiring social tech startup Katango.

“Katango just announced that it’s been acquired by Google, and that it’ll be joining the Google+ team,” TechCrunch reports. What’s more, “We’re also hearing that Google isn’t only acquiring Katango for their talent -- it’s interested in their technology as well.”

“The acquisition is of particular interest for a few reasons, the obvious one being that Google+ is now better positioned to compete with Facebook and its Smart Lists,” writes VentureBeat.

Recently launched as an iPhone app -- to help Facebook users selectively share content -- Katango specializes in analyzing social groups, and automatically sorting them into differentiated buckets.

“Google+ has a feature that’s analogous to Facebook’s Friend Lists: Circles,” notes TechCrunch. But, “while Google has promoted Circles heavily … it doesn’t do much in the way of automatically helping users sort their friends into Circles … Which Katango seems perfectly suited to help with.”

“Ever since we broke the news about Google's circles, it seemed like a necessary new social networking feature,” according to ReadWriteWeb. “But the effort required to maintain G+ circles is discouraging. Facebook's smart lists solve the problem remarkably well. Hopefully, the Katango team will help Google help us keep our online social lives organized.”

“While Google heralded the Circles feature as a key element separating Google+ from Facebook … some users and critics found Circles too laborious to use,” seconds Search Engine Land.

This summer, Slate’s Farhad Manjoo likened using Google+ Circles to arranging seating charts for a wedding.

“This is an interesting [deal] as Katango was essentially built for Facebook and was even funded by Facebook (somewhat indirectly) via sFund to the tune of $5 million, back when it was known as CafeBots,” notes VatorNews.