Facebook and location-sharing startup Gowalla announced on Monday that Gowalla's founders as well as several team members
will join Facebook and move to the
social network giant's headquarters in Palo Alto, California.
The announcement was made following media reports last Friday that Facebook is acquiring Gowalla as a whole to work on
its Timeline feature, one of the most drastic changes to the social network since it was founded, Xinhua reported.
Facebook confirmed in a statement that the Gowalla team is moving to Facebook in January to join its design and engineering teams, saying "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".
Facebook IPO in Apr-June 2012 Gowalla, launched in Austin, Texas in 2007, is primarily a social mobile app allowing users to check in locations they visit with photos and other contents. As of last November, the service has around 600,000 active users.
A blog post by Gowalla CEO Josh Williams said the Gowalla service will be winding down at the end of January and they plan to provide an easy way to export user data.
India can be our leading market: Facebook "Facebook is not acquiring Gowalla's user data," he noted.
Besides Timeline, Gowalla is also expected to beef up Facebook's location service Places to overtake "foursquare", the most popular location service Gowalla has been struggling to compete against.
Major US tech bloggers and news sites used buzzword "acquire" to describe Gowalla's departure, which refers to big tech companies purchase small companies primarily as talent recruitment strategy usually at a relatively cheap price.
"I haven't had a boss in over a decade. This could get interesting," Williams tweeted Monday morning.
"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," he added.
Last month, Facebook acquired two firms -- Strobe and MailRank -- for an undisclosed amount in a bid to expand its services on smartphones.
Strobe provides technology that helps developers create and distribute applications that work on devices like smartphones and tablet PCs, while MailRank prioritises e-mail so that the user can focus on the content that really matters.
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