Facebook has announced it is hiring the co-founders and other developers of Gowalla, one of the location-based “check-in” social networks. As a result, it is expected that Gowalla will close in 2012. Facebook
is also opening a software engineering centre in New York as part of its strategy, its first away from the West Coast of the US.
Earlier reports had suggested that Facebook had acquired Gowalla for an undisclosed sum but this was denied by Facebook who have now issued a statement to say that Gowalla co-founders Josh Williams and Scott Raymond, along with other members of the Gowalla team, are moving to Facebook in January to join the design and engineering teams.
Texas-based Gowalla is a two-year-old social network based around the idea of allowing users to “check in” to locations and share pictures from their visits but struggled to compete with the larger Foursquare network.