Facebook Checks-In On Loopt
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
You just have to love the writing on TC.
Right before the quote you posted, TechCrunch says, "Facebook has been doing background checks, known as due diligence...."
There aren't too many reasons for one private company to do due diligence on another private company besides acquiring it. When reading the actual article, the logical leap makes more sense than taking that quote out of context.
That is an often repeated but mistaken myth.
There aren't many reasons for a company to agree going through a due-diligence except for the chance to being bought, unfortunately some companies use due-diligence as a research tool into markets they think they might be interested in with no real intention of actually purchasing the inspected company, sometimes even developing a competing product at the SAME time.
Although where you are more likely correct, and what I didn't think through well enough before my initial comment, is that in the case of Facebook/Loopt, it is possible that Facebook is building a Loopt competitor, rather than buying Loopt.
ALTHOUGH, you would think Loopt would know this and wouldn't open itself to Facebook's scrutiny. Perhaps Facebook is making the case to Loopt that they're interested in purchasing them, but actually have much more sinister ideas?
Ah, the politics of M&A. I love it.
But maybe reporting on it makes no difference because enough people in the industry would know about it anyway. I don't know.
If Facebook is truly doing due diligence on Loopt, MG's article will get the attention of others who may come and take a look and create a competitive bidding environment. Anonymously slipping TechCrunch a tidbit is the easiest way to do this without being caught shopping the company and irritating Facebook.
However, one of Loopt's biggest use-cases is location-based dating. I think trying to get into the dating business would be a terrible mistake for Facebook.
How so? They're not doing anything in that direction as far as I know. Is this just your suggestion that it would be a good use case for them to pursue?
> I think trying to get into the dating business would be a terrible mistake for Facebook.
Why? Facebook could do it a lot better than any of the existing dating-only sites with the info they have on everyone's social graph and their high penetration. They probably wouldn't want to come out and blatantly add a "dating" feature, but instead just add features that "happen" to facilitate dating use-cases. A lot more people would be willing to do internet dating if it wasn't explicitly "internet dating", but instead just happened as an organic process on a site they were already a part of for other reasons.
You can browse your social graph, find out who is single, check out their pics, their profiles, and the minutia of what they ate for breakfast last Tuesday. If you like what you see, you can send them all manner of messages through platform features (would you like to "poke" Jennifer? "Poke"? Really?). And if you wind up in a relationship with this person, you both can mark that on your profiles (and later, so can you mark your Bukowskian divorce).
Facebook Connect, Farmville, and the fact that your Grandmother signed up for an account has not changed the fact that Facebook's roots are in helping college kids hook up for date.
I suppose I will have to look this one up.
Perhaps my impression is skewed coming from gayworld, but I thought this is all anybody used them for.
Location based! It's gonna be big I tell ya! What BS. Where do they pluck these numbers from?