Social media giant Facebook has hired the co-founders and several team members of geo-social app Gowalla but will not acquire the service itself, which is due to be shut down in January.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Based in Texas, Gowalla was launched in 2009 by Josh Williams and Scott Raymond. Its mobile app allows users to \u201ccheck in\u201d to real-world locations using their mobile devices.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Facebook has confirmed its purchase of Gowalla, but says it is not buying the brand\u2019s service or location-based technology. Instead, it will absorb the management team behind the company.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cGowalla co-founders Josh Williams and Scott Raymond, along with other members of the Gowalla team, are moving to Facebook in January,\u201d Facebook said in a statement.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile Facebook isn\u2019t acquiring the Gowalla service or technology, we\u2019re sure that the inspiration behind Gowalla will make its way into Facebook over time.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Gowalla team will relocate from Texas to Facebook\u2019s headquarters in Palo Alto, California.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Facebook has declined to specify what product or service the Gowalla team will work on at Facebook, other than noting that the team will join Facebook\u2019s design and engineering teams.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Williams explained his decision to accept Facebook\u2019s offer in a recent blog.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout two months ago, my co-founder Scott and I attended [developers\u2019 conference] f8. We were blown away by Facebook\u2019s new developments,\u201d Williams wrote.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cA few weeks later Facebook called, and it became clear that the way for our team to have the biggest impact was to work together.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cGowalla, as a service, will be winding down at the end of January\u2026 Facebook is not acquiring Gowalla\u2019s user data.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It\u2019s worth noting that Gowalla was released the same week as Foursquare; a rival location services start-up.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Both companies provide a way for people to broadcast their whereabouts to friends and others by using their mobile phones to \u201ccheck in\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
However, Foursquare increased its user numbers faster than Gowalla, which has never able to catch up.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Foursquare even issued a statement about Gowalla\u2019s move to Facebook, offering its congratulations to Williams and his team before noting the success of its own service.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cHere at Foursquare, we continue to focus on building an amazing product and growing our 15,000,000-strong community,\u201d the company said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Social media giant Facebook has hired the co-founders and several team members of geo-social app Gowalla but will not acquire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43637"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}