Gowalla Officially Pulls its Plug

Three months after Facebook acquired Gowalla, the latter has officially pulled its plug during the South by Southwest event last week. It was a location-based service that directly competes with Foursquare.

The service posted a note on its website last Sunday, informing users about its closure. They also pointed out that users can download their content soon:

“Thank you for going out with Gowalla. It was a pleasure to journey with you around the world. Download your check-ins, photos and lists here soon.”

Working for Facebook Timeline Features

Gowalla’s intent to shut down is in line with Facebook’s plan to integrate its technology in their system. Following the social media giant’s acquisition, former Gowalla CEO Josh Williams has been working on a Facebook API that will allow developers to integrate location services through shared content.

This will improve the social network’s platform, and will allow users to share their entire content straight from the apps that they’re using. As posted by Alex Wyler, Facebook’s software engineer, on a developer blog last March 7:

“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 photo or updates their status.”

On the other hand, the Facebook-Gowalla integration will provide developers with tools that can help them build robust applications, which will helps users to fill in their profile with detailed accounts. Simply put, the social media giant wants to use the location-based service’s technology to further integrate itself in their user’s daily lives.

Sharing Better Stories on Timeline

The introduction of Timeline to all Facebook users is one way of encouraging them to document their lives on the Web. Rather than discussing their daily activities in one post, they can include more details through their shared content. Now that the social media giant has Gowalla, users can are enable to do things that they can do on a status update via third-party apps.

Gowalla was launched three years ago during the SXSW 2009 event. Last year, the service reported that they were able to garner 600,000 registered users. Unfortunately, they had a hard time competing with Foursqaure.

Now that the Austin, Texas -based company has closed up shop, it’s expected that the Gowalla staff will move to Facebook’s Palo Alto, California to work on the social media giant’s Timeline feature. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether Gowalla users will move to other location-based online services.

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