Excited founders of Gowalla had announcements on the blog, noting that the firm would be shifting their base to California soon, to join the Facebook team. Josh Williams, one of the founders of Gowalla, wrote on their blog that they were in talks with Facebook, since the F8, the Facebook developer conference, ended in September.
Williams said, “We were blown away by Facebook’s new developments. A few weeks later Facebook called and it became clear that the way for our team to have the biggest impact was to work together. So we’re excited to announce that we’ll be making the journey to California to join Facebook.”
What is Gowalla? Gowalla, is an independent service, however, will be winding down at the end of January. But Williams added that that the social networking giant is not acquiring Gowalla’s user data as part of the acquisition. Conceptually, it is a ”checking in” service, which is for the real-world locations with mobile phones.
What does Gowalla do? The Gowalla application allows people to share their location and favorite places with friends.
This is not the only acquisition papered by Facebook recently. Last month the company acquired two firms, namely Strobe and MailRank. Again, the amount for the acquisition was not disclosed. MailRank prioritizes e-mail so that the user can focus on the content that really matters, while Strobe provides technology that helps developers create and distribute applications that work on devices like smartphones and tablet PCs.
Whatever may be the case, Facebook attempts seem to be concentrated on expanding its services on smartphones.
Facebook, on its part said in an emailed statement on Monday, “In talking with the Gowalla team, we realized that we share many of the same goals: building great products that reach millions of people, making a big impact quickly, and creating new ways for people to connect and share what’s going on in their lives.”
The company further added, “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.”
However, a Facebook spokesman did not comment on specifying what product or service the Gowalla team would work on at Facebook. The only detail he briefed media with was that the team would join Facebook’s design and engineering teams.
Facebook, with this step, would not only strengthen its mobile platform, but would even be able to throw in a competitive stand against Foursquare, a rival location services startup, which is the most popular in the field.
Facebook had tried its hand in competing with Foursquare earlier, but the social networking giant failed miserably and withdrew the said option.
However, Williams and Gowalla co-founder Scott Raymond will both join Facebook in January, along with other members of the Gowalla team.
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