Facebook buys Gowalla, aims for location-based dominance *UPDATE* Facebook make confirmation statement

Facebook, the social-network overlords of our personal lives online, have bought out up-and-coming location based network Gowalla.

Gowalla’s location check-in service will be integrated into Facebook’s newest “Timeline” homepage interface, allowing people to more precisely attach a location to the important moments in their lives shared on the network.

“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,” an anonymous source told CNN.

Gowalla currently connects with other social networks such as Foursquare and Twitter, but it’s likely to lose this functionality as it becomes part of Zuckerberg’s empire.

It is not known how much Facebook paid for the service.

UPDATE

We’ve just been sent this message from Facebook, confirming the partnership:

“We’re excited to confirm that Gowalla co-founders Josh Williams and Scott Raymond, along with other members of the Gowalla team, are moving to Facebook in January to join our design and engineering teams. In talking with the Gowalla team, we realized that we share many of the same goals: building great products that reach millions of people, making a big impact quickly, and creating new ways for people to connect and share what’s going on in their lives. While Facebook isn’t acquiring the Gowalla service or technology, we’re sure that the inspiration behind Gowalla will make its way into Facebook over time.”