Facebook acquired Gowalla over the weekend, buying the location-sharing service best known as the one that isn't Foursquare.
The story first broke on Friday, but it took a few days for the parties involved to kind-of confirm, according to AllThingsD. Now, one of the company's founders, Josh Williams, has confirmed the move on the company blog:
About two months ago, my co-founder Scott and I attended F8. 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!
Williams also said that the service will end in January and allow users to export data. However, he said that Facebook isn't acquiring any of Gowalla's user data.
Gowalla has been recasting itself as a travel guide and the Austin-based company has been shopping itself around for the last few years looking for a buyer, according to CNN. Some of the company's workers will work out of Facebook's Austin office while others will move out to Facebook's headquarters in Silicon Valley.
It's most likely that this was a "talent acquisition," or a way for Facebook to get a whole bunch of experienced engineers who will likely work on its location-based projects. We can't see that Gowalla would have anything else that Facebook would want.
