Confirmed: Gowalla bought out by Facebook

Andre Yoskowitz
5 Dec 2011 13:43

Gowalla has confirmed that they have been acquired by social networking behemoth Facebook.
The company says that its founders and team members will join Facebook and move to the Palo Alto headquarters with Gowalla "winding down at the end of January."

Users can then export their data at that point.
Adds FB, via Crunch:

We're excited to confirm that Gowalla co-founders Josh Williams and Scott Raymond, along with other members of the Gowalla team, are moving to Facebook in January to join our design and engineering teams. 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.

Gowalla, which was made popular due to its "check-ins," recently redesigned its mobile apps to move towards "user-generated place recommendations." The site was beginning to feel the heat from check-in services like FourSquare and from daily deal behemoths Groupon and Google. Additionally, Facebook had added its own "Places" location-based deals service, but recently shut it down.