Tag: gowalla

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Brief Facebook Social Media Social News

Facebook + Gowalla = A Better Timeline Experience?

When in December last year Facebook acquired location sharing service Gowalla for an undisclosed sum, speculations were ripe that Facebook was planning to improve its Timeline feature by buying this company, and how right they were. Today in a blog post by the company it was revealed that Gowalla’s former CEO Josh Williams along with his team have been working on developing an API that lets developers integrate everything from status updates to photos, from friend tagging to checkins.

Timeline Map featuring Friends and Location.

Quoting from the blog post by Alex Wyler – “Starting today, location and friends can be added as properties to any photo, link, or status written from an app. This is similar to the functionality a user has when they add a photo or updates their status.”

 It seems Facebook might finally be ready to take their Timeline to the success level that they presumed it would reach when it was first announced a few months ago. Being able to checkin and eat at your favorite restaurant, and being able to add those who are with you,  taking snapshots of the little gathering and posting it on Facebook, all done through the same platform and without any hassles, truly amounts to great user involvement.

Gowalla’s former compatriots Foursquare have been making a lot of progress and already had 5 times Gowalla’s user base when Facebook acquired Gowalla, but the question now stands, has the Facebook team acquired the right company to boost its Timeline feature? We will soon find out. You may probably find the answer here.

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Brief Social Media Social News

Top Acquisitions Of Social Media Industry In 2011

This year has resulted as the golden year in social media history. Social networking sites – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare etc. – have grown exponentially. Their revenue as well as user base have appreciated above market expectation. Also, number of acquisition took place this year is comparatively higher than last year. Various small social media companies have either been acquired or merged into big companies.

However, few of the acquisitions are such small that even no one would have heard about it. Taking in view of that we are going to highlight the top acquisition which took place in social media industry in 2011.

Here is the list of top acquisitions that took place in social media industry:-

  1. Bantam Live acquired by Constant Contact
  2. Beluga acquired by Facebook
  3. Blue Sky Factory acquired by WhatCounts
  4. Context Optional acquired by Efficient Frontier
  5. DimDim acquired by Salesforce
  6. Flowtown acquired by Demand Force
  7. Geotoko acquired by Hootsuite
  8. Gowalla acquired by Facebook
  9. GroupMe acquired by Skype
  10. Hunch acquired by eBay
  11. Katango acquired by Google
  12. Kosmix acquired by Walmart
  13. Magneto acquired by eBay
  14. Myspace acquired by Specific Media
  15. Next New Networks acquired by Youtube (Google)
  16. OneForty acquired by HubSpot
  17. Performable acquired by HubSpot
  18. PostRank acquired by Google
  19. Radian6 acquired by Salesforce
  20. Rypple acquired by Salesforce
  21. SimpleGeo acquired by Urban Airship
  22. SocialMedia.com acquired by LivingSocial
  23. Sometrics acquired by AMEX
  24. Tagged acquired by Hi5
  25. Tweetdeck acquired by Twitter
  26. Twitterfeed acquired by Bit.ly
  27. Where acquired by eBay
  28. Whrrl  acquired by GroupOn
  29. WuFoo acquired by SurveyMonkey
  30. Zagat acquired by Google
  31. Efficient Frontier acquired by Adobe
  32. Skype  acquired by Microsoft

Above are the acquisitions that took place in 2011. Out of above acquisitions most famous was of Microsoft Skype acquisition and Facebook Gowalla acquisition.

From the list it is quite clear that this year social media titan Facebook was in aggressive mood of acquisition, it has acquired two companies, while Google acquired three companies.  In E-commerce industry eBay acquired two companies, while Salesforce has strengthened its position in “social enterprise arena” by acquiring three companies.

These acquisitions will help conquerors in growing further in future. These acquisitions state that the company’s business are running in momentum and in future this momentum will help users in various ways like job creation, enhanced features, more offers and so many other things.

(Source:- Socialfresh)

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Brief Facebook Social Media

Facebook Acquires Gowalla: Is The Step Suicidal For Gowalla ?

Location sharing service – later turned into online travel guide – Gowalla has been bought by Facebook for an undisclosed amount, confirmed by sources. The deal has yet not been confirmed by any of the company spokesmen officially but sources has claimed that Facebook took the initiative to strengthen its Timeline team. Gowalla’s business is similar to Timeline feature – launched by Facebook in F8 conference – till and extent and addition of Gowalla team with timeline, including its founder Josh Williams, will surely improve the Timeline feature for next level.

“It’s a perfect match,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the deal has not yet been publicly announced. “As far as the big picture, Gowalla’s vision is about people telling stories, and Facebook’s vision for Timeline is about stories about important moments in life.”

Undoubtedly, it’s a great move for Facebook. Company has got brains – proven in the market – and will immediately strengthen Timeline team which is under roll-out of Timeline feature to 800 million plus Facebook users. But what is there for Gowalla on long run – besides getting pocket filled with millions of dollars probably? Absolutely, not much !

Its going to prove nothing much than a suicidal attempt for Gowalla on functional ground. Whole Gowalla team is going to sit in Paulo Alto working with Timeline Team and would be unplugged from the Gowalla platform. Infact Facebook too has no much strategic plan for Gowalla platform and it may dump Gowalla along with other companies who were acquired by Facebook only to get killed. Beluga, Hot Potato, Drop.io, Snaptu are only the few who got the same treatment from Facebook after acquisition.

Few industry analyst see this as a intelligent move by Gowalla to avoid the ‘slow-death’ like “MySpace”. Gowalla was losing the market to Foursquare constantly for last couple of months. At one point it had to derived its business focus to online travel guide business to stay afloat. If the trend would have continued, chances were high that Gowalla would have been completely stun-off from the market as users are turning off from Gowalla on regular basis. Traffic was declining, users were turning off and revenue was plunging. Definitely, it was a tough road ahead for Gowalla.

People will have different views to analyze Gowalla’s decision but besides financial gain there is absolutely no gain for the company. Don’t be surprise we Facebook shuts down the shutter of Gowalla home page soon !

Categories
Facebook

Facebook Places: Feature to Know Your Friends’ Location

Facebook has decided to implement a new feature in it’s addictive social networking site called “Places” which allows FB users to share their locations with friends & relatives. With this, the company has extended its reach into the real world from the virtual one at a time when there is significant concerns about privacy, which caught it in the wrong foot. Facebook however. expects acceleration in sales ad revenue with Places.

“Places” helps users of it’s social network to find friends and disclose their own location with the help of geolocation technology, and is aimed primarily at mobile users. “Places works with existing location-aware tools offered by Foursquare, as well as Gowalla Inc”., baby-faced CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today at an event hosted in their Palo Alto headquarters. He added; “Places will “help people stay connected everywhere they go, not just at their computer.”

While Facebook stopped short of announcing how it would make money off its location services, the move paves the way for the company to become a major player in the growing business to supply local information and advertising with teh help of augmented reality, rivaling efforts by Google. and others.

The new service allows Facebook users to tap the location-sensing capabilities of their mobile phones to “check in” to a business or address and then instantly share it with their Facebook connections. The optional service will also allow users to find other people who have also recently logged their presence physically nearby.

While location-based mobile-app companies such as Foursquare Labs Inc. have drawn attention from early adopters and investors, Facebook’s entry into the market could help make the idea of sharing one’s location with friends and businesses become a mainstream service. The company already has 150 million users of its service on mobile phones, although the Places service will initially only be available on an app for Apple Inc.’s iPhone and through an enhanced mobile website.

For the existing generation of location-based Internet services, Facebook extended an olive branch by opening the location data that it collects to third parties. Appearing at Facebook’s announcement, some initial partners, including Foursquare, as well as Gowalla Inc, said they thought Facebook would be an enabler—not a competitor—by introducing a lot of new users to the world of sharing their locations.