Facebook’s Plans for Gowalla Revealed

So this is what Facebook has been doing with its Gowalla acquisition.

Josh Williams, the former CEO of Gowalla, has been working on a project since Facebook bought his company back in December: He is part of a team that has been developing an API that lets app developers integrate actions like status updates, photo and video-sharing, friend-tagging and checkins at various locations. Such data will ultimately fill out a user’s Timeline with “more detailed moments,” according to a blog post from the company on Wednesday.

How would that work in practice? In the post, Facebook describes a Foodspotting-like app that would let all your friends know what you’re eating. But, with the new functionality, you might also be able to tag Facebook friends sharing your meal.

Williams says that while that’s a good example of how the new integration might work, he’d like to see apps that are more aspirational in nature. “I haven’t seen a lot of exploration around ‘places I want to go in the future,’” Williams says, “or journalizing a trip from the past.” Williams says that fitness apps will also benefit from the new capability.

Of course, the goal is for Facebook to further insinuate itself into users’ lives and, via Timeline, provide a more complex portrait of you to advertisers on the network. But to do that, Facebook is relying on third parties to create apps. “The floodgates are open,” Williams says. “I can’t wait to see what [app developers] come up with.”

Source: Mashable

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