
Facebook buys Gowalla - mitchellh
http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/02/technology/gowalla_facebook/index.htm?iid=HP_LN
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whalesalad
Definitely 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
Does 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.

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VladRussian
>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"

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oldstrangers
I'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?

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harryh
It's an irrelevant event for us.

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brk
Would 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.

~~~
harryh
A) 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
I 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.

~~~
harryh
Oh, I think that the team at gowalla is great, and I have mad respect for
them. But in terms of facebook's overall hiring this is a relatively small
deal. Don't really know how many folks FB hires a year but I'm guessing
hundreds?

Sorry if I was curt. Just trying to be clear and concise.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Fwiw, you were perfectly clear. Anytime someone says
_"Facebook/Google/Awesome-Tech-Company-of-the-decade bought them as a talent
acquisition"_ , the obvious implication (and compliment) is that the talent is
really _talent_. Don't know where this confusion is coming from.

~~~
nhangen
Probably because of this line: 'Once you're beating someone by a factor of
over 100:1 you move on to other things.'

which I thought was abrasive.

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tzury
Off 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>

~~~
buster
Wow.. 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..

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Tichy
Then again they seem to cover a lot of popular tourist destinations.
<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.

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webandy
I 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_fours...](https://github.com/webandy/migrate_gowalla_checkins_to_foursquare)

~~~
harryh
We'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.

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bmac27
It 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
Yeah, 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
I 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
Agree, but not sure what that has to do with execution. More passion? More
expertise? You think that's why 4sq won?

~~~
zach
I 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.

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elbenshira
I remember an article about how Gowalla was bringing SV talent to Austin. Heh.

~~~
kainosnoema
This 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.

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oldstrangers
Evernote just moved in. We also have Facebook and Google offices.

~~~
adrianparsons
Infochimps, 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
BazaarVoice and WhaleShark Media are another two that come to mind.

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bitsoda
This 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.

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pmf
Facebook has now the best design team in the valley. Hands down.

Gowalla plus Made by Sofa plus Push Pop Press

~~~
oldstrangers
Facebook 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
My 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
I 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.

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brianbreslin
this 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?

~~~
simanyay
Facebook does only talent acquisitions. They never buy products.

~~~
deathwarmedover
Facebook used parts of FriendFeed actively after acquiring them:
<https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/301/>

~~~
simonw
Do Facebook use Tornado internally, on anything other than FriendFeed.com?

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unreal37
I 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?

~~~
blackysky
it's not a major exit just a talent acquisition but I guess he had his
original investment back...

~~~
a5seo
Liquidation prefs really help with that. Founders get screwed, but then again
at this point Gowalla is effectively a fancy body shop.

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kin
Gowalla's gorgeous. And right when Google is in process of beautifying all its
products, makes sense as a talent buy to me!

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hkarthik
Gowalla's been doing some interesting things with Cassandra, so this sounds
like a great fit. Congrats to all involved!

~~~
spullara
Facebook has pretty much moved everything from Cassandra to HBase at this
point.

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raheemm
Why 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.

~~~
irollboozers
IPO?

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fourstar
When 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?

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pacomerh
Gowalla'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.

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cliftonk
Congrats Gowalla!

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msie
Uh oh, what will happen to the Gowalla api?

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kainosnoema
Nobody 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>

~~~
lpolovets
[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-Plac...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-pros-and-
cons-of-each-Places-API)

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mindhunter
"buy all the brilliant pixel pushers"

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vicngtor
I thought facebook was moving away from checking-in. Is this a talent or
product acquisition?

~~~
kainosnoema
Gowalla'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".

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rwhitman
"Social travel" is kind of a startup black hole. That was a bad direction for
a pivot.

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pbreit
What ever happened to Gowalla's first product, the game Alamo Fire?

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sheraz
From the outside looking in I would say talent acquisition as well.

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damoncali
Ouch. I was sort of hoping they'd make something of it.

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heyrhett
Are you Gokidding me?

