Location-based service Gowalla, which allows people to share their locations via mobile phones, will become extinct by the end of January as its co-founders and several key employees are going to join social networking giant Facebook.

Gowalla co-founders Josh Williams and Scott Raymond along with other key employees will join Facebook’s engineering & design teams at its Silicon Valley-based headquarters.

The deal is being seen as a sheer talent acquisition because Facebook hasn’t acquired Gowalla’s technology, product or user data.

Speaking on the deal, the world’s most popular social network said, “While Facebook isn’t acquiring the Gowalla service or technology, we’re sure that the inspiration behind Gowalla will make its way into Facebook over time.”

Facebook turned down request to specify what projects the Gowalla team would work on, but people familiar with the matter said that Gowalla team was appointed to work on the new Timeline feature that highlights key events in users’ lives.

Facebook has more than 800 million active users across the globe.