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Facebook buys Gowalla

money.cnn.com

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Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#101

Post by fpp »

whalesalad wrote: post #30

Definitely a talent acquisition. Gowalla has always been absolutely gorgeous, through all of it's various designs. I could never really use it for a long period of time though, because it was only useful with fellow web-dev like friends. In the real world, I think it's pretty useless. Unlike something like Twitter, which managed to grow some legs and start gaining traction with virtually everyone in the world. I'm ex…

Does pretty much look like that - and you would not exactly buy the runner-up of the 4square / Gowalla competition at a premium - so might have also been a deal at quite favorable conditions for f-book.

Given the understanding here that Gowalla will bring great engineers and with them a whole bunch of other innovative people to f-book in a time where such teams are one of the sparsest "resources" (anyone remember the story published recently that GOOG is paying their engineers 250k p.a.) it might help to cure some of Zuckerberg's "greatest fears" as voiced by their COO last week in NY at the BI Ignition conference (lack of innovation, lack of people aka "...Google has two times as many job openings as we have employees...")

Being able to acquire whole teams of innovative people is certainly their best chance to catch-up.

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#102

Post by irollboozers »

fufulabs wrote: post #61
oldstrangers wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook does have a solid design team, but I wonder where all that talent is being directed? Visually, their hires in the past year or so haven't made an impact with facebook.com. At least with Google's new design team, you can see what they're doing. So, one has to ask, what are these people working on? A facebook phone? Facebook X.0?

My bet is Facebook OS on top of Android ala Kindle Fire. the UX will be its only differentiator so much care is needed there.

this just blew my mind.

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#104

Post by samstave »

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+…

Just to play the devils advocate a bit: Sometimes you need to forge ahead without any fear or concern for what Facebook is doing or does.

There are millions of people, like myself, who will never have a Facebook account - or at least will use services that are not fuly coupled to FB.

I think, while one should certainly keep track of what facebook does - one should never not do something/change their behavior simply because of facebook

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#105

Post by jorgeortiz85 »

simonw wrote: post #80
lawrence wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do you think money wasn't a factor? Foursquare raised significantly more than Gowalla (according to Crunchbase, $71m vs $10m), and as a result grew a much larger team and presumably spent a lot more on marketing.

Actually, until mid-2010, Gowalla raised more money, earlier, than foursquare did. By then, the "check-in wars" were pretty much over.

Per Crunchbase[1][2]:

In 2008, Gowalla raised $2m, foursquare raised nothing. In 2009, Gowalla raised $8.29m, foursquare raised $1.35m. In 2010, Gowalla raised nothing, foursquare raised $20m. But by the time this happened (June 2010), the "check-in wars" were over (e.g., see: http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/foursquare-gowalla-stats/).

[1] http://crunchbase.com/company/gowalla [2] http://crunchbase.com/company/foursquare

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#107

Post by codexon »

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+…

He answered the question.

Why would you expect him to lavish complements on a competitor that lost by a wide margin?

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#108

Post by zach »

lawrence wrote: post #76
gsiener wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agree, but not sure what that has to do with execution. More passion? More expertise? You think that's why 4sq won?

I presume it means that, having seen things from the inside out, his team knows winning and losing things to spend time on.

Nearly every startup ends up with a list a mile long of potential features, ideas, refinements, communities, partners and revenue sources. Being able to pick out the right few to work on (and what to say no to) is maybe the most important skill a startup CEO can have.

A founder who has been around the same space for a long time can use past experience and intuition where a newly-minted CEO knows very little and is actually best off when they recognize that.

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#109

Post by VladRussian »

fpp wrote: post #101
whalesalad wrote: post #30

Definitely a talent acquisition. Gowalla has always been absolutely gorgeous, through all of it's various designs. I could never really use it for a long period of time though, because it was only useful with fellow web-dev like friends. In the real world, I think it's pretty useless. Unlike something like Twitter, which managed to grow some legs and start gaining traction with virtually everyone in the world. I'm ex…

Does pretty much look like that - and you would not exactly buy the runner-up of the 4square / Gowalla competition at a premium - so might have also been a deal at quite favorable conditions for f-book. Given the understanding here that Gowalla will bring great engineers and with them a whole bunch of other innovative people to f-book in a time where such teams are one of the sparsest "resources" (anyone remember the…

>Gowalla will bring great engineers and with them a whole bunch of other innovative people to f-book ... "greatest fears" as voiced by their COO last week in NY at the BI Ignition conference (lack of innovation, lack of people

i worked at a big [ultimately failed] SV company and for many its final years the "innovation" was the top word of the CEO and other executives. When company executives start talking innovation it pretty much means that company got enough entrenched products, market position and internal balance of power that any significant internal innovation is killed immediately [by the same executives] to avoid any risk to the above mentioned products, existing revenue streams and internal power, etc... Once internal innovation is squashed and has vanished as a result, the executives start to whine that there is a "lack of innovation, lack of people"

Re: Facebook buys Gowalla

#110

Post by tbrooks »

CoachRufus87 wrote: post #95
tbrooks wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this a big loss for Austin? Gowalla isn't involved in the community.

they are/were involved in the rails community

No, the individual developers from Gowalla were involved in the Rails community. Gowalla, as a company, was not.
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