Days after launching its location-based Places service, Facebook has acquired Hot Potato, a Brooklyn-based company with a mobile app that combines news feed and location-based features.
The company will be "wrapping up operations," and will no longer be accepting new user sign-ups, Hot Potato said on its blog.
"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," Hot Potato wrote. "Facebook is still small, moves fast, provides a great supportive environment for people to be entrepreneurial, and most importantly, Facebook builds great products."
The Hot Potato team will join the Facebook team, the company said. Existing users will be able to download their data from their user account, none of which will be ported over to Facebook, Hot Potato said.
"In about a month, Hot Potato will close up shop and delete all user data," the blog post said. "No user data or account information will be kept by Facebook. We will be sure to keep you posted on this process over the next few weeks."
Hot Potato combines the news feed aspect of Facebook with the location features in services like Foursquare. You choose a verb (like "attending") and a location (like "the Super Bowl") and Hot Potato will post this from your account. The idea is to connect with other friends who might be doing the same thing, or to keep friends updated about your activities. Friends can then comment on what you've posted. For those friends not using Hot Potato, you can push your updates to services like Twitter and Facebook. Hot Potato also offers rewards, much like Foursqare's mayorships and badges.
It's not immediately clear how or if Facebook will integrate Hot Potato with its site. Earlier this week, Facebook unveiled Places, which allows users to "check in" to certain places from their Facebook accounts.
Executives from Gowalla and Foursquare, companies that would likely have the most to lose from the release of Places, appeared on stage at Wednesday's Places announcement, and endorsed the product. Foursquare later said that it has seen a record number of sign-ups in the days since the Places announcement.
The Hot Potato acquisition also comes several days after Facebook acquired Chai Labs, a somewhat mysterious company founded by by former Google "godfather of Adsense" Gokul Rajaram, which bills itself as a one-stop shop for customizing and launching search-friendly Web sites.