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Facebook catches Hot Potato location startup

Stuart Dredge
Facebook catches Hot Potato location startup

Hey, maybe it's launching a geolocation serv... Oh.

Facebook has acquired startup Hot Potato, a social location service which launched last November.

Its app let people 'check-in' to activities and live events from their phones, while integrating with other services like Foursquare and Twitter.

The acquisition has been rumoured for weeks, but Hot Potato has now confirmed the deal on its blog.

"We’re thrilled to announce that some of the features and thinking behind Hot Potato are going to be exposed to a much larger audience: We’ve been acquired by Facebook," explains the team.

"This wasn’t an easy decision, especially since we’ve built up a base of dedicated users. If Hot Potato was going to sell to anyone, Facebook was the natural choice."

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What about those dedicated users? Hot Potato has announced that it will close its service in a month's time, although it will provide a way for existing users to download their data beforehand.

While Hot Potato says that no user data will be retained by it or Facebook, it's clear that the ideas behind its app will become part of Facebook Places.

That, in turn, could be bad news for startups like Miso and GetGlue, which are focused on letting people check-in to activities rather than locations.

Tags: facebook , hot potato