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 excited to see what these guys can do at FB.
Also, does anyone else find it amusing that CNN broke this news and there isn't a single mention of it anywhere on TechCrunch?
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.
>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"
Also, does anyone else find it amusing that CNN broke this news and there isn't a single mention of it anywhere on TechCrunch?