Nextstop, a location-aware company which allowed users to view comments and multimedia about locations around the world, has announced it has been acquired by social-networking giant Facebook.
The team behind nextstop, which was founded by ex-Google employees, have today posted a heartfelt message for their loyal customer base on the nextstop website, in which they say they were "amazed and delighted" about the enthusiasm surrounding the project.
"When we started nextstop just over two years ago, our goal was to make it dramatically easier to discover great things to do anywhere in the world," the team wrote.
"During that time, we"ve been amazed and delighted by your enthusiasm for this project, and it"s strengthened our conviction that information from friends and passionate locals is a much better way to discover the world around you."
The idea behind nextstop was similar to that of Yelp, aiming to "build a catalog of all the best things to do, places to go, and experiences to try anywhere in the world." And while Yelp may have previously held the upper-hand with a larger user base, nextstop"s technology could soon be used by the approximately 500 million Facebook users, when a new location-based service rumored to be almost ready for prime-time is debuted.
In a specially created FAQ about the acquisition, Nextstop says all the aggregated data about almost 100,000 places and recommendations it collected will be released under the Creative Commons in the coming weeks, and that no user information will be shared with Facebook.
The site will continue to run as-is for the next two months, with users encouraged to export their own data before nextstop"s doors finally close on September 1.