Rumors say that Josh Wiliams, co-founder of Gowalla which was acquired by Facebook last year, is planning to leave the social networking giant soon.
Williams has not announced his new plans yet or what he intends to do after leaving Facebook, but according to AllThingsD sources, he is moving to San Francisco to take a rest first, then work on putting up his own company.
“Joshua has been a valuable member of Facebook,” a Facebook spokesperson told AllThingsD. “We wish him the best of luck with his future endeavors.”
Well, Williams is not the only one turning his back on Facebook because Tim Van Damme, a former Gowalla employee , also announced his plans of leaving. He used to work with Instagram as well before he moved to Facebook. However, sources of AllThingsD clarified that their decisions are not related and they are not cooking something together.
“Tim has contributed a lot to the look and feel of many of our products and we’re thankful for his contributions to our design team,” Instagram told AllThingsD. “We wish him the best.”
Gowalla was one of the top players in the mobile location check-in app category in which it reigned between 2009 and 2012. This may be the reason why Facebook chose to buy it. Foursquare was one of the top competitors of Gowalla and remains its independent status. However, Foursquare had already shifted from being check-in based to location discovery based which means you have to be really on-site for you to be checked in.
Upon acquisition, Facebook hired Williams as Product Manager for Facebook Pages, Locations and Events. One of his remarkable legacies was the feature that allows users to rate and provide reviews about certain products. The function was comparable to Yelp.
Williams had spent one and a half year with Facebook and is said to leave on July 19.
