San Francisco — Barely days after introducing its location-based Places service, Facebook over the weekend announced that it has snaffled up “Hot Potato,” a Brooklyn-based company with a mobile app that combines news feed and location-based features that lets people use smartphones to let friends know what they are up to at any given moment, in a move that could help further its move into location-based services.
Hot Potato revealed the deal on its blog over the weekend but did not disclosed the purchase price. The company will be “closing up operations,” and will no longer be accepting new user sign-ups, Hot Potato said on its blog.
Hot Potato informed fans of the deal on Friday; barely two days after Facebook unleashed a new feature that lets US members of the social networking service share their whereabouts with friends while on the move. “We are thrilled to confirm that we recently acquired Hot Potato, a service that helps people socialize around live events and share what they are doing with friends,” Facebook said in a statement.
“We have appreciated the way Hot Potato is handling this space and count on working with them to bring Hot Potato innovations to Facebook.”
Hot Potato posted to its blog today that it has indeed been acquired by Facebook. “This was not an easy decision, especially since we have built up an humongous base of dedicated users, the Hot Potato Team says. If Hot Potato was going to sell to anyone, Facebook was the natural choice,” Hot Potato wrote. “Facebook is still small, moves fast, provides a great supportive environment for people to be entrepreneurial, and most importantly, Facebook builds great products.”
Around eight month ago, Hot Potato launched a social networking service that empowers users to “check-in” to let friends know what they are thinking, watching, playing, attending, listening to, or otherwise doing.
Hot Potato allows people to contribute what they are doing with friends and connect with other people conducting the same thing. People visit the page and choose the beginning of a sentence like “I’m attending…” or “I’m listening to…” and then fill in the rest of the sentence. They then join a group of people who have posted similar ideas. The group can share photos and videos and ask each other questions.
Users can also create whole new categories by writing an entire sentence following “I’m.‘
Meanwhile, Hot Potato has discontinued signing up new users. The company will no longer accept new registrations, and they will offer a way for existing users to download any information and content they want to keep. In about a month, Hot Potato plans to shut-down completely and delete all user data and would not transfer it to Facebook.
The service was already linked to Facebook in that Hot Potato can look for friends who use the service through their Facebook logins. People can also link their profiles to their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
The acquisition seems to be another step in a vision by Facebook to become a collective memory of sorts, letting members tie their experiences and thoughts to locations for posterity.
A Facebook Places service that commenced in the United States since last Wednesday marked the firm’s passionately anticipated initiative into “location-based” services that is on the rise with people who possess smartphones equipped with satellite position tracking capabilities.
“You can immediately communicated with people about that favorite spot with Facebook Places,” said Places product manager Michael Eyal Sharon.
“You can contribute where you are and the friends you are with in real time from your mobile device,” he said.
Meanwhile, privacy advocates were prompt to express apprehension about adding people’s locations to the treasure trove of personal data Facebook users store at the social-networking service.
“We understand and appreciate the various privacy protections and options that are currently available to Places users,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a release.
“But there were some straightforward steps that we highlighted to Facebook that they could have taken to improve the privacy features before launch.”
According to technology website TechCrunch, Facebook paid $10 million for the company.