"There is no indication that Facebook has made an actual offer to buy Loopt at this time, and in fact we don’t even have direct information that negotiations are taking place. But it’s clear that Facebook is at least considering acquiring Loopt, and/or others in this space."
I know it's easy to comment on how oddly (or poorly) written some TC articles can be, but this is taken out of context.
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.
I don't like to see this kind of story reported. If Facebook doesn't now buy Loopt it will look like something bad came up in due diligence, making Loopt less attractive to other potential acquirers, at least for a while. Further, Facebook will be tempted to use that fact for leverage.
But maybe reporting on it makes no difference because enough people in the industry would know about it anyway. I don't know.
Heh, when I read the story I assumed that MG's source was an executive at Loopt.
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.
As the blog post points out, Facebook has one of the most popular iPhone apps in the world (and Blackberry, and Android) but despite that big mobile user base hasn't made a play in the geo space, so this makes sense on that front.
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.
> However, one of Loopt's biggest use-cases is location-based dating.
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.
I think dating is one of the biggest use-cases for social networks. Nobody is on them just to date, but since everybody is on them, they are used for dating a LOT.
[+] [-] jseifer|16 years ago|reply
You just have to love the writing on TC.
[+] [-] loganfrederick|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] herdrick|16 years ago|reply
But maybe reporting on it makes no difference because enough people in the industry would know about it anyway. I don't know.
[+] [-] gyardley|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] seldo|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jey|16 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] PanMan|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] axod|16 years ago|reply
Location based! It's gonna be big I tell ya! What BS. Where do they pluck these numbers from?
[+] [-] marshally|16 years ago|reply