Facebook has acquired Gowalla, a young online start-up launched in 2009, for an undisclosed sum.
The Austin-based company previously started off as a location-sharing service that went head-to-head with the current market leader, Foursquare.
The company however, failed to keep up with its direct rival and had to shift its direction. It had to rebrand itself as kind of like a travel guide – offering travel tips and focusing on telling the story of the user’s travels.
As CNN reports, majority of Gowalla’s employees, including its founder Josh Williams, will now be transferring to Facebook’s offices in Palo Alto and work on Facebook’s Timeline feature. According to the article, an unnamed source talks of the acquisition as a “perfect match” because “Gowalla’s vision is about people telling stories, and Facebook’s vision for Timeline is about stories about important moments in life.”
The acquisition however, has not been publicly announced yet, and Facebook has yet to comment on the report.
