After a failed attempt to beat location-based check-in service Foursquare last year, Facebook has re-entered the arena by purchasing Foursquare’s biggest competitor, Gowalla. This comes from a source inside Gowalla – Facebook is not commenting. Gowalla was also declared a loser to Foursquare and pivoted earlier this year to become a travel guide. That will likely be adjusted under Facebook to refocus on a segment of social media that has eluded the social networking giant. Most of the employees will relocate to Silicon Valley, while some will remain in the Austin, TX, office where Gowalla…

When Twitter finally hit the mainstream press in 2009, you could essentially predict the comments on every fluff piece put out by a magazine or newspaper: Twitter is stupid, it’s “for twits” and “my God, I can’t believe anyone would be so stupid as to use this idiotic service”. As it turned out, those people were, well, completely and utterly wrong; Twitter unarguably has its uses, and has been a boon to millions everywhere. Yet these days, there is a lot of chatter – much of it on Twitter, no less – that new location apps like Foursquare or Foodspotting are stupid, pointless and “my God, I can’t believe…

Amid the unending din of posts, tweets and articles about South by Southwest Interactive, one thing became clear: mobile location apps are the next big thing. In one corner was Austin-based Gowalla, fighting on its own home turf. In the other was Foursquare, the NYC-based startup that many associate with the ‘check-in’ craze. But regardless of who wins, unless services like these open up their data, we all lose….

If there was one trend to emerge from the geekfest that is South-by-Southwest interactive this year, it’s that mobile location services are heating up. Though nobody’s quite sure why people are all telling the world where they are, it sure is getting popular. Case in point: Patently Apple have discovered that Apple is working on their own location-based service called ‘iGroups’….