Gowalla Helps Facebook Grow Service

The following commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet's guest contributor program, which is separate from the company's news coverage.

By Tom Taulli, InvestorPlace Writer

NEW YORK (InvestorPlace) -- Founded in 2007, Gowalla was one of the first location-based social networks. Its offering made it easy to use a mobile device to "check in" to a place and see if there were any nearby friends. Gowalla also had a game element -- you could earn badges and points for the number of times you visited a location.

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It was a cutting-edge service, and it also leveraged the boom in smartphones. Yet Gowalla's app didn't get much traction, even though it had an appealing interface. Instead, it was rival Foursquare that got most of the attention.

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So it should be no surprise that Gowalla decided to sell out. According to CNNMoney, Facebook has picked up the company (the price tag was not disclosed).

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It's a good bet that the Gowalla service will disappear as certain features wind up in Facebook, which has already implemented various location-based features over the past year.

But for the most part, the acquisition is likely about snagging top-notch engineers. In Silicon Valley, it's extremely tough to find mobile software engineers, and Gowalla certainly has a rich talent pool, which has built across platforms like Google's (GOOG) Android, Apple's (AAPL) iOS, and Research In Motion's(RIMM) BlackBerry. Also see: Apple shares its technology with IBM, Nokia

It also looks like Gowalla will be instrumental in evolving Facebook's Timeline feature, which shows a person's social history. Gowalla has been strong in developing story-based experiences, which seems to be the next stage in social networking.

Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog "IPOPlaybook," a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He is also the author of "All About Short Selling" (Link: ) and "All About Commodities." Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli.

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