One story has dominated the top of techmeme today, and that’s the supposed acquisition of Gowalla by Facebook which will bring most of the Austin, TX company into Facebooks headquarters in Palo Alto, California.
What’s unclear is the motive behind the takeover for most pundits. Will Gowalla co-exist with Facebook? No, of course not. It’s a direct rival to Facebooks own check-in system. Not only that, Gowalla is better at check-ins (even down to the UI in their app) than Facebook. I imagine their technology will be pushed into Facebook’s core system fairly quickly and we’ll see a roll out of a new check-in system (or at least a re-vamped one) in the new year.
A choice quote from the CNN story goes…
Facebook views takeovers as a good way to build up its talent bench. The company aims to make about 20 purchases in 2011, up from 10 last year, Vaughan Smith, Facebook’s director of corporate development, told Bloomberg in August.
That’s about the guts of it. Facebook can’t directly hire all the talent it needs, so instead of spending lots on getting talent in the door they can acquire companies and move their contracts from
The problem is that this strategy was used in the 90s by Microsoft. Now look at them…
