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R.E. Tinch
Roger Erik Tinch // Tech-centric cinephile with an unhealthy addiction to the webGowalla vs Foursquare
Yesterday, Mashable.com published an article called “5 Ways Foursquare is Changing the World.” As a Gowalla evangelist/addict I thought I would respond to it with my thoughts on why this geo-location service is the one to beat.
Mind you, I was using Foursquare before Gowalla, but I found it to be a very tedious and frustrating process in adding locations compared to Gowalla’s elegant solution of using GPS coorindates to determine your “spot” (of course Foursquare has added this feature in recent versions). From there I fell in love with the idea of “items” and the strong sense of design (particularly icons) that added to this intriguing notion of owning these virtual goods. It’s become a tiring routine of trying to sell people on Gowalla while I watch them “check-in” on Foursquare. Kind of reminds me of 2007 when I constantly peddled Facebook as the social network to join while calling MySpace an also-ran. But, I digress:
1. Items
The immediate difference between Foursquare and Gowalla is the idea of “items.” It’s a simple, but powerful idea that adds many opportunities for interaction and branding. Check-in at a location and you’ll see the items that are available with the choice of swapping for an item or dropping one off for someone else to discover.
Besides the mechanics of items is the aesthetic beauty of these digital collectibles. Designed by a stable of talented icon artists at Alamofire, the company behind Gowalla, these highly detailed items fuel the high of checking-in to see what goodies await. It’s not surprising to know that the idea of Gowalla sprung from the company’s other icon oriented game on Facebook: PackRat.
2. Trips
Another dead simple idea that has endless possibilities is the concept of “trips” on Gowalla. Essentially it’s a group of spots that if you check into all of them earns you a “trip pin.” Imagine creating a sight-seeing tour of your city that visitors can follow to earn a city pin or a foodie trip that people can follow to eat at some of the best places in town. And this isn’t even adding the item element or the ability to leave messages when you check-in. It starts to make Foursquare’s “to-do’s” and “tips” a little stale, don’t you think?
3. Creators and Founders
I absolutely hate the idea of Foursquare mayorships. Why? First, the ability to game this feature by checking in from the comfort of your home is annoying and really degenerates the value of being a mayor. Second, the jockeying for a mayorship creates unnecessary rivalry and turns into a endless competition of who can check-in the most at one location. It’s the one aspect of user engagement on Foursquare that completely misses the point of a geo-location based app: quality not quantity. Here in Vegas I’ve seen this Mayor animosity first-hand and it ain’t pretty.
Gowalla approaches this idea differently and elegantly by using “creators” and “founders” to give credit. A creator is just that, the first person to have created the spot and who will forever will hold that title. There’s no battle to the top, no need to bombard your check-in status, it’s a final and definitive credit. This also gives great incentive for people to venture out to lesser known venues or tucked away gems that they might’ve not otherwise discovered. A founder is a person who sacrifices one of their items by dropping it off at a spot without swapping for another item. It’s an easily controlled mechanism that leverages the value someone feels for an item versus their need to be a founder and is limited by the number of items they have. I don’t want to get too philosophical, but the system essentially penalizes you for your need of vanity.
4. Geotagging
One unique feature to Gowalla items is seeing where they originated from and how they came into your possession. Besides the context of seeing who’s checked into spots you now have this added element of items telling stories. How far did this item travel? How many (virtual) hands has it passed through? I had an item that travelled all the way from Germany and found it’s way to a coffee shop in Palo Alto. It’s such an engaging layer to the idea of geo-location and something that Foursquare sorely misses.
5. Brandable Hooks
Now you ask, this is all fun and games, but how can I use it to market my brand? This is where all of the above crystalizes to form Gowalla’s plans for monetization and the value a service like this can offer a company. Foursquare can spit out coupons on check-in or tips for new customers and all of this Gowalla can accomplish as well, but in a much more visual and entertaining fashion. Seriously, why in this day and age of palm-sized supercomputers are we still dealing with analog ideas like coupons?
Let’s say you’re Budweiser who wants to advertise a new beer at local bars in Vegas. Have a custom Gowalla item designed to look like your product and dropped off at locations across the city. Then people checking-in can pick up the item and show it to the bartender for a free sample. Or, what if you’re the bar owner who has a few other bars around town? Then you can create a branded trip that awards a custom pin that can be redeemed for free drinks or discounts. The possibilities are endless and all take advantage of the visual currency that Gowalla offers.
Check-in or Check-out
So hopefully I’ve shown you why Gowalla is the app/service of 2010. It’s biggest disadvantage now is that its only available on the iPhone, but that will soon change. Once it does I expect it’s growth to explode. And for those that have an iPhone the argument of “none of my friends are on it” is not a reasonable excuse. It takes one in your circle of friends to introduce it to the rest, so be that one.
In the meantime I’ll be checking-in/creating spots, picking up items and going on trips. See you on the Gowalla side!
P.S. A few of us Gowalla diehards are putting together the first ever Swap Meet here in Vegas on February 3. Details here.
Great writeup showcasing the virtues of Gowalla over FourSquare. I have them both on my iphone and I agree with the ease of use of Gowalla. I also like being rewarded for being the creators. Luckily I live in a small town so I get to be the founders for alot of places
Why I removed Gowalla from my iPhone in favor of foursquare:
1. Gowalla: None of my friends get it. The gaming aspect actually turns most people I know off. Why? Well, because:
2. “Items” are garbage. It’s a collecting game. The problem is that the game itself is dull and boring. And the items metaphor doesn’t provide incentive for people to check in, badges do. Which brings us to:
3. People actually *USE* foursquare, to get badges. Badges are a better incentive, because they require LOTS of work to get them. People tend to check in more often when they need to get a large number of checkins, or places, or what have you.
Oh, and 4: Foursquare works for anybody.
I was a big Gowalla supporter at first. But then 4sq opened up their client to work anywhere instead of in bigger cities only. Adoption of 4sq among my circle of friends was literally overnight. In the space of one weekend, half my friends were using 4sq regularly, and I’d been trying to get them to use Gowalla for months.
Foursquare is simply the winner. Sorry. Them’s the breaks.
Great article! I ADORE Gowalla, but I’m one of those people “waiting” for everyone to jump on board. Once the support for more phones comes out, I see A LOT of people jumping ship from Foursquare to Gowalla. (Let’s hope anyway)
I didn’t realize the creators of Gowalla are the same people that do the PackRat app. PackRat is the app I first got addicted to on Facebook and now see the similarities (especially their Vegas items as they relate to the Vegas set on PackRat).
I really like the concept and would love to play along with you all but the mobile site is clunky on my Blackberry and no app yet. Until then, I use FourSquare just to distract me and I actually use it while I play poker as a way to clock in and clock out so I know how long I played.
As a whole, I’ve had two instances where I found a geo app useful. One was a friend checking in at a restaurant I had driven by many times but never been to. I asked him about it on twitter and there was a fun dialogue that came out of it from several locals (including you).
I love how easy it is to add new locations to Gowalla.
What I don’t like is the inability to say anything about locations. I want to know about places my friends love to go to and why they like them. What should I order at restaurants? What days are best to go? etc.
Currently I am using both, having just upgraded to an Android phone, I now have the simplicity of the FourSquare app. I have to fight with the mobile Gowalla, but a desire to keep up with what is currently the favorite in Vegas, so I put up with it.
No doubt this year is going to be the battle between the Geo apps, with Gowalla rolling out BB and Android apps in the forseeable future. I will be watching closely to see which one comes out on top.
I’m with you rally, I want to be able to use on my Android but I’ll have to wait. Great write up roger, you’ve been tweeted
Could not agree with you more. I wrote up a comparison between the two of them a few months ago after using them both in tandem for a while.
Gowalla is so far superior. The mind boggles why foursquare gets all the press.
One other key comparison that should be an important one to not-yet-established retailers / establishments looking to jump on the geo local app bandwagon.
Foursquare, by it’s gameplay, encourages users to visit the same spots over and over again to achieve mayorship. It is all about being a regular.
Gowalla is all about discovery. A user is far more likely to venture to a new venue and check it out in order to check it off the list.
What is worth more? A stream of new customers or the same ones multiple times?
I’m sure there is a trade-off somewhere.
http://m.gowalla.com works great on my Android 2.1 phone.
I agree with Otto. I installed Gowalla and Foursquare at the same time almost 3 months ago and gave them both a fighting chance. I didn’t “get” the fun of collecting items…it seemed kinda lame. I immediately “got” the fun of getting badges. I think that was the tipping point for me; after about 3 weeks of using both I deleted gowalla and moved foursquare to my iPhone’s main screen since I found myself using it many times a day.
I admit there are some things (like trips) that I wish foursquare had, but I just don’t see Gowalla being a mainstream app. I think it will continue to be much beloved by those people who enjoy collecting beautiful digital heirlooms, and forgotten by the rest of us, while Foursquare becomes the next Twitter in terms of user growth rate.
I am a Gowalla faithful follower. It makes me sad to think of Foursquare dominating the market, but that very well may happen. I could never imagine angling to be the “mayor” of anything, but I love the virtual geocache aspect of Gowalla. In fact I’m going on a road trip tomorrow and excited about what new items I may discover and have already been trying to decide which item I am goit to leave at a popular rest stop. It’s fun to think where it will travel in the world.
[...] badges. (read more of Twitter journalist Jenna Wortham NYTimes and Roger Erik @Tinch writeup on Retinch and Business Insider by Henry [...]
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