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Facebook acquires Gowalla team to boost location-based services

Facebook is acquiring the team behind social networking service Gowalla as it continues to build out its location-based services.

Gowalla recently dropped check-ins to become more of a travel planning service that lets users share places, photos and stories for the places that they have been. In the post on Gowalla's company blog announcing the Facebook deal, the company revealed that the Gowalla service will be discontinued in January.

?After Foursquare took an early lead [in the check-in space], Gowalla has emphasized the parts of its product that make it unique, such as travel planning and exhibiting the stories around the places you?ve been,? said Michael Boland, senior analyst and program director at the Kelsey Group, San Francisco.

?The most recent form Gowalla has taken involves the latter ? clustering pictures, location, updates and other media around the things you?ve done and places you?ve been,? he said. ?That is very much in line with what Facebook is doing with its new Timeline feature.

?The similar vision, Gowalla?s technology, and the talent in its team, were all I believe the biggest drivers of this acquisition and the indicators of how Gowalla will plug in to Facebook.?

Bigger mobile role
Facebook said it would launch a revision of its user profiles called Timeline back in September but the service still is not available. Timeline is supposed to be a way to make user profiles a more substantive record of people?s lives.

While Facebook is not acquiring the Gowalla technology, the social networking giant could use the Gowalla team?s vision and know-how to incorporate location check-ins and location tagged photos into Facebook Timeline.

Facebook has 350 million active mobile users and its mobile applications are popular but the social network?s role in mobile is still limited.

?Facebook previously backpedaled on its own check-in functionality, and brought it into its main feature of status updates ? allowing users to tag a location to any check-in,? Mr. Boland said.

If Facebook can create a unique mobile experience ? which presumably Gowalla will help it do ? it could be a bigger player in mobile.

The news that Facebook is acquiring Gowalla follows reports that the social networking giant is developing a smartphone in collaboration with HTC. Such a move could position Facebook to grab a bigger piece of the application market (see story).

The Gowalla team will be relocated to the Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, CA.

?About a third of Facebook?s 700 million global users are actively accessing the service via mobile,? Mr. Boland said. ?So we?ll continue to see acquisitions and internal development that boost mobile features.

?Gowalla could be one example, in capturing locations, status and tagged photos via mobile, likely to help populate wall posts and Facebook?s Timeline,? he said.

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York

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