"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," reads a statement issued by Facebook. Gowalla's team, including CEO Josh Williams and co-founder Scott Raymond will move from the company's Austin, Texas, headquarters to Facebook home base in Palo Alto, Calif.
It's not clear how Facebook will integrate Gowalla's technology. The latter company created a location-based social network that lets users check in to various locations. The service was similar to that of Foursquare, but Foursquare has a much larger user base -- 10 million vs. Gowalla's 2 million. Facebook currently lets users check in to locations via Facebook Places.
In a blog entry, Gowalla CEO Josh Williams detailed his decision to take Facebook's offer. "About two months ago, my co-founder Scott [Raymonds] and I attended F8," Williams wrote. "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."
Facebook's statement was along the same lines: "In talking with the Gowalla team, we realized that we share many of the same goals: building great products that reach millions of people, making a big impact quickly, and creating new ways for people to connect and share what’s going on in their lives."
Williams wrote that Gowalla will be winding down at the end of January and "we plan to provide an easy way to export your Passport data, your Stamp and Pin data (along with your legacy Item data), and your photos as well." Williams added that "Facebook is not acquiring Gowalla’s user data."