Just one week after Google announced its acquisition of travel industry giant ITA Software, it appears that Facebook is dipping a toe in the same water. This afternoon, Nextstop revealed that it’s being absorbed by Mark Zuckerberg’s organization.
Nextstop is, as its name tends to imply, a company that deals in travel recommendations. Its stated goal has been "to make it dramatically easier to discover great things to do anywhere in the world," and it’s pursued this for two years with guides, recommendations, and a sizable community.
Unfortunately for Nextstop’s users, the site is going to shut down on September 1st due to the acquisition. The Nextstop team believes it will be able to accomplish similar things on a much greater scale at Facebook, however.
Also, a notice posted on Nextstop’s site explained, "In the next few weeks we will be releasing the nextstop database of places and recommendations under a Creative Commons license in a format suitable for easy importing. Our aim is make it possible for other products – whether they already exist or are yet to be created – to harness the collective knowledge of the nextstop community, which includes information on nearly 100,000 recommendations for places around the world."
One last note: the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, so just how much Facebook paid for Nextstop may remain a mystery for a while.
