Gowalla To Go The Way Of The Dodo

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Michele Neylon

Image by sermoa via Flickr

Gowalla is to be shutdown.

After being acquired by Facebook the “also ran” to FourSquare will be shutting down early in 2012, according to Techcrunch.

So while Facebook may have acquired the skills and experience of the FourSquare team, they’re not taking over all the data.

So will Facebook use some of the technology to improve their own location based services? You’d have to assume that was the plan..

Guess we’ll find out ..

Facebook Acquires Gowalla (socialmediaexpert.ie)
Facebook Confirms Acquisition of Gowalla (mashable.com)
Gowalla confirms move to Facebook, service to shut down in January (engadget.com)
Instagram gets a slice of Gowalla’s design staff in Tim Van Damme (thenextweb.com)
Facebook buys Gowalla in assault on location-sharing market (guardian.co.uk)
Why Facebook needs Gowalla (telegraph.co.uk)

Facebook Acquires Gowalla

Posted on December 3, 2011 by Michele Neylon

Image by sermoa via Flickr

Facebook has acquired Gowalla according to reports.

Gowalla, which offers very similar functionality to FourSquare, never quite seemed to be as popular as its rival.

Facebook had been offering a location based service for its mobile users, but they were reportedly going to be phasing it out, but with the addition of Gowalla that will probably change ie. the current Facebook system will be supplanted by Gowalla’s technology.

The main page of Gowalla currently offers users the option to signup via Facebook, though it still maintains a signup feature for those that do not wish to succumb to Zuckerburg. Whether that will change or not is probably too early to tell

Report: Facebook Acquires Location App Gowalla (forbes.com)
Facebook Buys Gowalla [REPORT] (mashable.com)
Facebook To Acquire Location Service Gowalla? (viralblog.com)
Facebook Buys Gowalla (gizmodo.com.au)
Here’s how to delete your Gowalla account if you don’t want Facebook to have it (thenextweb.com)

Guinness Try To Force Age Restrictions On Twitter

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Michele Neylon

Guinness Ireland’s Twitter account is a bit odd.

They want to restrict their followers to people over the age of 18!

Guinness Ireland's Twitter account trying to impose age restrictions

Of course I’m not “following” their account, but I can still see all their content!

And here’s the screenshot to prove it:

Guinness Ireland's "over 18 only" twitter account

I think the word I’m looking for is “fail”

They’ve posted a “clarification” of what they’re “trying” to do:

You won’t be blocked as such.You’ll be removed from our followers & you’ll need to verify age before u can follow us again

Seemingly this is similar to the laughable “age restrictions” that alcohol companies put on their websites.

It’s kind of sad really that they’d even try to do this on a social media network. So you can add alcohol companies to the list of those that simply don’t “get” the web..