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Facebook buys Gowalla

money.cnn.com

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Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#41

Post by lpolovets »

webandy wrote: post #32

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? Tak…

Awesome!

If you or anyone else is interested in migrating from Gowalla to a different service, the company I work at, Factual, has a useful (Beta) API for mapping ids between different location data providers: http://developer.factual.com/display/docs/Places+API+-+Cross...

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#42

Post by harryh »

whalesalad wrote: post #40
harryh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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+…

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.

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#43

Post by brk »

harryh wrote: post #29
brk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dis…

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.

It's understandable that you don't consider them a competitor, but who is? Most people tend to agree that it is not good to have NO competitors.

Go walls was in some ways a kind of straw an against Foursquare. You had someone to be "100:1" against. Now who is your competitor?

I would not call this inconsequential because it can also be interpreted as the non-viability of check-in sites as a distinct business.

I appreciate you engaging in the conversation but you haven't convinced me that this acquisition is in anyway irrellevant to Foursquare.

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#44

Post by harryh »

brk wrote: post #43
harryh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's understandable that you don't consider them a competitor, but who is? Most people tend to agree that it is not good to have NO competitors. Go walls was in some ways a kind of straw an against Foursquare. You had someone to be "100:1" against. Now who is your competitor? I would not call this inconsequential because it can also be interpreted as the non-viability of check-in sites as a distinct business. I appre…

I'm not here to convince anyone of anything. You asked a question, and I answered. Just trying to be helpful.

To answer your question about who our competitor is, it's the same as it's always been (and always will be): the back button. Our job, as pg says, is to build something people want. We started by building checkins and attracted millions of users doing that, now we're moving on to building the best social city guide we possibly can as well as starting to explore interesting new ways for local merchants to communicate with their customers.

It's not about beating someone else. It's about building something useful enough that people will pay attention at all. That's what startups are really about.

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#45

Post by stevenp »

harryh wrote: post #29
brk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dis…

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.

The fact that foursquare was beating Gowalla 100:1 is proof that you don't have to have a better, more fun-to-use, better designed product in order to win in the market.

My love affair with Gowalla was prematurely extinguished when they pivoted to local guides, but I hope that this acquisition means that they'll bring some of their original magic to Facebook.

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#46

Post by thurn »

simanyay wrote: post #23
brianbreslin wrote: post #5

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?

Facebook does only talent acquisitions. They never buy products.

Beluga was a product acquisition.

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#47

Post by lawrence »

bmac27 wrote: post #26

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.

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.

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#48

Post by deathwarmedover »

simanyay wrote: post #23
brianbreslin wrote: post #5

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?

Facebook does only talent acquisitions. They never buy products.

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

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#50

Post by gsiener »

lawrence wrote: post #47
bmac27 wrote: post #26

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.

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.

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.
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