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Facebook buys Gowalla
- vicngtor 15y agoI thought facebook was moving away from checking-in. Is this a talent or product acquisition?
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoTalent. Congrats Gowalla.
- kainosnoema 15y agoGowalla's been moving away from the check-in too, but even so, I imagine its mostly a talent acquisition. The source article mentions that the team will be working primarily on Facebook's new Timeline, which fits well with Gowalla's recent focus on "stories".
- brianbreslin 15y agothis has to be a talent acquisition. i wonder how long before gowalla product is mothballed? also wonder how little of a return their investors got?
- icco 15y agoThe article implies immediate product death.
- artursapek 15y agoI had never heard of them
- simanyay 15y agoFacebook does only talent acquisitions. They never buy products.
- thurn 15y agoBeluga was a product acquisition.
- majani 15y agoas was Snaptu.
- deathwarmedover 15y agoFacebook used parts of FriendFeed actively after acquiring them: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/301/ https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/301/
- simonw 15y agoDo Facebook use Tornado internally, on anything other than FriendFeed.com?
- msie 15y agoUh oh, what will happen to the Gowalla api?
- kainosnoema 15y agoNobody can say for sure yet, but I doubt it'll be around very much longer. If you're looking for a check-in API, Foursquare's seems like the best bet at this point. The Venues (ie. places) Platform is especially good, with rate limits starting at 5,000/hr: https://developer.foursquare.com/overview/venues.html https://developer.foursquare.com/overview/venues.html
- lpolovets 15y ago[Disclosure: I work at Factual] There are other good APIs to consider as well: Google Places, Factual, Yelp, etc. Each API has its own pros and cons in terms of query limits, terms and restrictions, fees, etc. This is a good starting place for research: http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-each-Places-API http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-each-Plac...
- sunsu 15y agoYou could also check out Fwix's API.
- elbenshira 15y agoI remember an article about how Gowalla was bringing SV talent to Austin. Heh.
- kainosnoema 15y agoThis is definitely a big loss for Austin. There are still a few interesting startups in the area, but Gowalla was the one that made it a serious contender.
- oldstrangers 15y agoEvernote just moved in. We also have Facebook and Google offices.
- JesseAldridge 15y agoMutual Mobile too: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/28/most-promising-companies-11_Mutual-Mobile_RHQU.html http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/28/most-promising-companies...
- caseysoftware 15y agoEbay/Paypal are investing big time in area too. I've chatted with a few of their recruiters to help.
- adrianparsons 15y agoInfochimps, Indeed, HomeAway, Demand Media, and OtherInbox top my list of nationally-known startups in Austin. Am I missing any? Outside of the startup world: Apple, IBM, Dell and AMD have major campuses in Austin. I grew up in Austin and live in NYC. I love seeing Austin companies make waves, but I feel like the startup scene there is still in its early stages.
- utan 15y agoBazaarVoice and WhaleShark Media are another two that come to mind.
- cliftonk 15y agoCongrats Gowalla!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- sheraz 15y agoFrom the outside looking in I would say talent acquisition as well.
- hkarthik 15y agoGowalla's been doing some interesting things with Cassandra, so this sounds like a great fit. Congrats to all involved!
- spullara 15y agoFacebook has pretty much moved everything from Cassandra to HBase at this point.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- oldstrangers 15y agoI'd love to hear the conversation at foursquare right now. I wonder if they're happy for their competitors, or maybe sad? Perhaps concerned that the check-in novelty is really dying off?
- harryh 15y agoIt's an irrelevant event for us.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- brk 15y agoWould you care to elaborate on that? I don't mean this as a dig, but if you think one of your competitors getting bought by the predominant, and deep-pocketed, social media site is "irrelevant" something seems strangely amiss. My guess is that you might have not seen them as a competitor, which would certainly be understandable. But this would still have ripple effect that is, IMO, somewhat worth more than casual dismissal.
- kmfrk 15y agoThis is - by all signs - a talent acquisition - not a product acquisition. As such, it is not directly relevant to Foursquare.
- harryh 15y agoA) They haven't really been a competitor for a long time. Once you're beating someone by a factor of over 100:1 you move on to other things. B) Facebook isn't buying the product (they don't care about the product). They're just hiring a couple of engineers/designers/product folks.
- whalesalad 15y agoI dislike your lack of humility and modesty in this discussion. You may be correct in your A point, but "just hiring a couple of engineers/designers/product folks" remark makes it sound like you guys are some elite squad, and FB is picking up some stragglers to join their team. I can see why you've taken this attitude though, since commenters here are attacking Foursquare and making you seem like you lost to Gowalla+FB, but there is really no need to say these things in HN.
- mindhunter 15y ago"buy all the brilliant pixel pushers"
- bmac27 15y agoIt was a very elegantly designed product; cleaner, crisper design than Foursquare's was in my opinion. But I always had difficulty checking in. I literally had to be inside a venue to register a check-in; and even then it was finicky. 30 feet away? Forget it.
- lawrence 15y agoYeah, this is an interesting topic. Why did Foursquare win? Was it anti-cheating provisions that were too strict in the early days? New York vs. Austin? Better PR? Simpler product? Dodgeball users as jumpstart? Who knows. One thing we do know was that it wasn't money.
- gsiener 15y agoI think it's pretty clear that Dennis Crowley has been thinking about this problem space for more than a decade, and foursquare is the third (fourth?) iteration on his original vision.
- lawrence 15y agoAgree, but not sure what that has to do with execution. More passion? More expertise? You think that's why 4sq won?
- zach 15y agoI presume it means that, having seen things from the inside out, his team knows winning and losing things to spend time on. Nearly every startup ends up with a list a mile long of potential features, ideas, refinements, communities, partners and revenue sources. Being able to pick out the right few to work on (and what to say no to) is maybe the most important skill a startup CEO can have. A founder who has been around the same space for a long time can use past experience and intuition where a newly-minted CEO knows very little and is actually best off when they recognize that.
- MrJagil 15y ago
- whalesalad 15y agoDefinitely a talent acquisition. Gowalla has always been absolutely gorgeous, through all of it's various designs. I could never really use it for a long period of time though, because it was only useful with fellow web-dev like friends. In the real world, I think it's pretty useless. Unlike something like Twitter, which managed to grow some legs and start gaining traction with virtually everyone in the world. I'm excited to see what these guys can do at FB. Also, does anyone else find it amusing that CNN broke this news and there isn't a single mention of it anywhere on TechCrunch?
- fpp 15y agoDoes pretty much look like that - and you would not exactly buy the runner-up of the 4square / Gowalla competition at a premium - so might have also been a deal at quite favorable conditions for f-book. Given the understanding here that Gowalla will bring great engineers and with them a whole bunch of other innovative people to f-book in a time where such teams are one of the sparsest "resources" (anyone remember the story published recently that GOOG is paying their engineers 250k p.a.) it might help to cure some of Zuckerberg's "greatest fears" as voiced by their COO last week in NY at the BI Ignition conference (lack of innovation, lack of people aka "...Google has two times as many job openings as we have employees...") Being able to acquire whole teams of innovative people is certainly their best chance to catch-up.
- VladRussian 15y ago>Gowalla will bring great engineers and with them a whole bunch of other innovative people to f-book ... "greatest fears" as voiced by their COO last week in NY at the BI Ignition conference (lack of innovation, lack of people i worked at a big [ultimately failed] SV company and for many its final years the "innovation" was the top word of the CEO and other executives. When company executives start talking innovation it pretty much means that company got enough entrenched products, market position and internal balance of power that any significant internal innovation is killed immediately [by the same executives] to avoid any risk to the above mentioned products, existing revenue streams and internal power, etc... Once internal innovation is squashed and has vanished as a result, the executives start to whine that there is a "lack of innovation, lack of people"
- webandy 15y agoI hacked together a "recipe" (requires a few steps) to migrate your gowalla checkins to foursquare. I moved 350 of my check-ins this way a couple weeks ago. I wanted to preserve the record of where I'd been, and more of my friends use Foursquare anyway. Unfortunately the 4sq API did not provide a way to back-date the check-in, so they all occurred on the same date (date of the API post). Perhaps that has changed? Take a look, fork/extend/add features etc., hope it is useful for someone else! https://github.com/webandy/migrate_gowalla_checkins_to_foursquare https://github.com/webandy/migrate_gowalla_checkins_to_fours...
- harryh 15y agoWe're working on the lack of ability to back-date checkins. We want to be a bit careful about how we do it, but should have something soon.
- lpolovets 15y agoAwesome! If you or anyone else is interested in migrating from Gowalla to a different service, the company I work at, Factual, has a useful (Beta) API for mapping ids between different location data providers: http://developer.factual.com/display/docs/Places+API+-+Crosswalk http://developer.factual.com/display/docs/Places+API+-+Cross...
- harryh 15y agoWe've now got things set up to handle backdated checkins, but you'll need to get whitelisted. See: http://twitter.com/foursquareapi/status/144516117510111232 http://twitter.com/foursquareapi/status/144516117510111232
- raheemm 15y agoWhy did Facebook wait this long? And since they waited this long, it probably means Foursquare rejected whatever offer was made. I wonder what that was.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- irollboozers 15y agoIPO?
- unreal37 15y agoI wonder what the purchase price was. And as a side note, Jason Calacanis is one of the angel investors right? Any comment by Jason as to whether he "did ok" or even got his original investment back?
- kin 15y agoGowalla's gorgeous. And right when Google is in process of beautifying all its products, makes sense as a talent buy to me!
- pmf 15y agoFacebook has now the best design team in the valley. Hands down. Gowalla plus Made by Sofa plus Push Pop Press
- pazimzadeh 15y agoApple is likely still leading.
- oldstrangers 15y agoFacebook does have a solid design team, but I wonder where all that talent is being directed? Visually, their hires in the past year or so haven't made an impact with facebook.com. At least with Google's new design team, you can see what they're doing. So, one has to ask, what are these people working on? A facebook phone? Facebook X.0?
- fufulabs 15y agoMy bet is Facebook OS on top of Android ala Kindle Fire. the UX will be its only differentiator so much care is needed there.
- untog 15y agoI really, really hope Facebook doesn't do that. It makes absolutely no sense for anyone to buy a Facebook tablet, unless they intentionally cripple the capabilities of their apps on other tablet platforms.
- irollboozers 15y agothis just blew my mind.
- gujk 15y agoIf the Facebook's new designers do nothing new at all, but they hold the line against Google-style insane UX-destroying experimentation, they will be incredibly valuable.
- simonw 15y ago
- heyrhett 15y agoAre you Gokidding me?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- pacomerh 15y agoGowalla's team has very good eye for design and user experience, so this is a smart move from facebook if this is a talent acquisition move.
- bitsoda 15y agoThis is well-deserved. I could never understand why Gowalla didn't gain as much traction as Foursquare despite their eye for sumptuous design. I often found myself rooting for the company, and I'm glad Google took notice of their talent. I look forward to whatever comes from the team. Congrats, Team Gowalla.
- tzury 15y agoOff topic to the acquisition, however, not being a Gowalla user, I went to gowalla.com and looked what they have to offer. Naturally, I look at my town, Tel Aviv[1], and was shocked. Tel Aviv has much more to offer than what it is listed in that guide, and in my opinion, it is far more attractive city than it appear at gowalla (for instance, some photos are rotated upside down, others by 90 degrees). Perhaps it takes more than just "snap a photo, type short description, we will get the location" to make a tourist guide. [1] http://gowalla.com/guides/tel-aviv http://gowalla.com/guides/tel-aviv
- buster 15y agoWow.. just browsed my hometown, Berlin, and it's really not a good picture. Most of the photos are horribly underexposed and show some boring places..
- Tichy 15y agoThen again they seem to cover a lot of popular tourist destinations. http://gowalla.com/guides/berlin http://gowalla.com/guides/berlin I am only in Berlin for 3 years and I would not necessarily be able to come up with better recommendations for tourists.
- pbreit 15y agoWhat ever happened to Gowalla's first product, the game Alamo Fire?
- damoncali 15y agoOuch. I was sort of hoping they'd make something of it.
- fourstar 15y agoWhen Facebook goes public, will they be sharing how much this sale was for, or not since it'll be after the fact by the time they have their IPO?
- rwhitman 15y ago"Social travel" is kind of a startup black hole. That was a bad direction for a pivot.