Following reports that the company as a whole had been acquired, Gowalla today announcedthat its founders and several team members have joined Facebook and will move to it’s Palo Alto headquarters. The Gowalla service “will be winding down at the end of January”, and options will be made available for users to export their data. Gowalla CEO Josh Williams says his company was impressed by what Facebook revealed at f8, and soon after he and other team members were asked to join the social network’s team.
Williams tweeted this morning about how he’ll have to adjust to having superiors again after running his own company for so long. Facebook tells us that “We’re excited to confirm that Gowalla co-founders Josh Williams and Scott Raymond, along with other members of the Gowalla team, are moving to Facebook in January to join our design and engineering teams. While Facebook isn’t acquiring the Gowalla service or technology, we’re sure that the inspiration behind Gowalla will make its way into Facebook over time.”
CNN Money first reported a leak that Facebook would be buying at least some part of Gowalla on Friday, and AllThingsD attained details about an email sent to investors explaining that the deal wasn’t finalized yet. Now with the deal finalized, we can start thinking about exactly how the acqhire will aid Facebook.
The Gowalla talent could help create compelling content for the profile Timeline based on the Places checkins of users. This was Gowalla’s core strength — badges, tips, notes, and other visual secondary content based off of checkins. When Timeline finally launches publicly, users could have the option to show which are their most checked in Places, how far they’ve travelled from home, or who they most frequently check in with. Facebook has never offered badges before, but might start now thanks the Gowalla’s designers and the Timeline providing a more stable place to display evidence of a user’s past checkin activity.
Another task the Gowalla talent could undertake would be turning Facebook’s location service Places into more of a Foursquare-killer. Currently, Places doesn’t help users discover locations based on their characteristics such as if they’re a restaurant, nightlife establishment, or public place. It also doesn’t let users find tips about what to do once they’re at a location. Foursquare has refocused on providing this value, so Facebook will need to decide either to go hard in this direction, or keep Places more of a minimal location backbone.
In his departure blog post, Williams writes that “Facebook is not acquiring Gowalla’s user data.” Instead users will be able to acquire it if they want as Gowalla “plans to provide an easy way to export your Passport data, your Stamp and Pin data (along with your legacy Item data), and your photos as well.”
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/05/gowalla-acqhire/
Williams tweeted this morning about how he’ll have to adjust to having superiors again after running his own company for so long. Facebook tells us that “We’re excited to confirm that Gowalla co-founders Josh Williams and Scott Raymond, along with other members of the Gowalla team, are moving to Facebook in January to join our design and engineering teams. While Facebook isn’t acquiring the Gowalla service or technology, we’re sure that the inspiration behind Gowalla will make its way into Facebook over time.”
CNN Money first reported a leak that Facebook would be buying at least some part of Gowalla on Friday, and AllThingsD attained details about an email sent to investors explaining that the deal wasn’t finalized yet. Now with the deal finalized, we can start thinking about exactly how the acqhire will aid Facebook.
The Gowalla talent could help create compelling content for the profile Timeline based on the Places checkins of users. This was Gowalla’s core strength — badges, tips, notes, and other visual secondary content based off of checkins. When Timeline finally launches publicly, users could have the option to show which are their most checked in Places, how far they’ve travelled from home, or who they most frequently check in with. Facebook has never offered badges before, but might start now thanks the Gowalla’s designers and the Timeline providing a more stable place to display evidence of a user’s past checkin activity.
Another task the Gowalla talent could undertake would be turning Facebook’s location service Places into more of a Foursquare-killer. Currently, Places doesn’t help users discover locations based on their characteristics such as if they’re a restaurant, nightlife establishment, or public place. It also doesn’t let users find tips about what to do once they’re at a location. Foursquare has refocused on providing this value, so Facebook will need to decide either to go hard in this direction, or keep Places more of a minimal location backbone.
In his departure blog post, Williams writes that “Facebook is not acquiring Gowalla’s user data.” Instead users will be able to acquire it if they want as Gowalla “plans to provide an easy way to export your Passport data, your Stamp and Pin data (along with your legacy Item data), and your photos as well.”
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/05/gowalla-acqhire/
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