Thoughts/Visions

On the surface, Foursquare and Gowalla share many characteristics, namely the idea behind them-it is a good way to figure out where you friends are, what they are up to, and to join them in what they are doing. However, the similarities are only skin deep.

Foursquare is just under a year old, yet has gained a worldwide audiance, and plenty of media coverage. Despite not being the most-used location based network out there (that crown goes to MyTown), it is the one that has been getting the coverage. Foursquare is one of the few Web 2.0 companies that have a business plan, revenue, and are making money. They do this by making everyhing in the service into one big game-user compete to become mayor, get awarded badges for their work, and are ranked on a leaderboard. Sure, this leads to some gaming of the system, but it also paves the way for social media to get integrated offline into marketing plans: One of Foursquare’s best ideas is that of a “mayor special”, which rewards the user that has the most check-ins in the last 60 days with anything from a free drink to a free meal. This is a big shift for a few reasons:

• It moves loyalty programs from a punch card in your wallet to and online experience
• It turns a simple “Your 10th coffee is free” campaign into a game, which drives users to go to a location more often, in hope of either protecting or stealing the mayorship.
• It encourages more interaction, rather than just a one-to-one transaction: I know of several places that I frequent that I have gotten to know others based on their check-ins, and am trying to go there more often to hold on to my mayorship.

Gowalla, on the other hand, is all about the social aspect. There is no real business model yet, and their application focuses on dropping/picking up items at different location, and going on “trips” with your friends. These trips consist of a set of locations to visit and check-in at. The founders see Gowalla as a way to find and share locations in your city. Not as game-changing as Foursquare, but still a really good idea.

The startups also differ on their technology, and this is where Foursquare really begins to shine locally. Foursquare relies on users and Google Maps to provide their location information, and Skyhook for figuring out location. This leads to having most of the places you vist show up in the database, ready for you to check-in at without missing a stride. I have only needed to add 3 locations since I joined nearly a year ago, and have checked-in about 500 times. Foursquare also uses its users to maintain the location database-if you earn “super user” status, you can remove closed venues, or merge 2 listings into one. This allows them to operate with a staff in the single digits, while maintaining a robust POI database.

Foursquare also has applications for Android OS, iPhone OS, and Blackberry OS, a mobile website for non-smartphones, and also a check-in syntax for text messages. If you have a mobile phone, you can play Foursquare.

Gowalla currently has an app for the iPhone (none for the iPod touch), an early beta app for the Android platform, and a mobile website that only works on Webkit-based browsers (currently the iPhone and Android, although rumors out of the Mobile World Congress suggest that Blackberry is getting one in 2010). Using it on my new Motorola Droid was a decent experiance, but you can tell that it is an early version-it is buggy, and missing several key features. Using the mobile app was ok, but the location feature was off-Google Maps would have me at my exact location, and Gowalla would put me several blocks away.

I was also not able to check-in anywhere that I went without creating the spot. I am not sure if this is because of the location issue, or if their database is that much smaller. Adding a spot is not hard, it is just rather annoying considering the simplicity that Foursquare’s large database provides.

If someone asked me to recomend one, it is Foursquare, hands down. Better experience, more users, and a bigger database all give it the win. This goes doubly so if you are a business-the integration of businesses into Foursquare’s model is top-notch. I was recently at CES, and the minds at Intel and Foursquare created a bunch of badges specific to the event, which is a really fun way to get people to both use their service and get them to brag about their trip to their other geeks, thus creating buzz.