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December 2, 2010 By

Gowalla checks in with Foursquare

Gowalla checks in with Foursquare

Gowalla, the Social Location Sharing app based in Austin, Tx released its new iPhone app today that not only includes a complete redesign of the already slick looking interface but includes in the new functionality the ability to checkin with Foursquare their biggest rival. A lot of people were surprised by this move, including Dennis Crowley CEO of Foursquare who tweeted to Josh Williams CEO of Gowalla earlier today:

Hmm.. dig seeing all these @foursquarecheckins appear in Gowalla but doesn’t look like there’s any VenueIDs matching. @jw,how can we help?

What gives the best indication that the two CEO’s had not spoken about this merging of checkin’s was Dennis’ reply to others also talking about the way the checkins were working:

@psyphen @jw Not mismatched, they’re just not matched at all (tho the TechCrunch article says they’re supposed to be). I’m confused too.

So it appears that Dennis found out about the new functionality of his rival from seeing the checkins appear and then reading the TechCrunch article about the new feature.

This Changes Everything

Actually it really doesn’t. While it’s great that Gowalla now allows people to checkin on Foursquare and Facebook Places and also announce where they are on Twitter and Tumblr other services have done this before them. Check.in allows users to checkin simultaneously on Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Whrrl and TriOut while at the same time announcing these checkins to Twitter and Facebook. Not only does it already have this functionality but it is available on iPhone, iPad and Android already. Gowalla’s new app won’t be out on any other platforms before the new year.

Gowalla’s new interface also pulls Tips from Foursquare and allows you to see where your friends from other networks have checked into recently. Again this feature isn’t new, TriOut, originally a Hyperlocal Social Location Sharing app focused on the Triangle area in North Carolina that has now expanded its operation to cover the whole of the US also offers this level of integration.

What seems to be happening here is the directional stratification that many, myself included, predicted would happen earlier this year. The “fight” over who would win the checkin war has dissolved. Gowalla’s stated aim is to become the Social Location Tour Guide. Foursquare is focused on providing deals and SCVNGR and others are focusing on gameplay.

Drive Checkins

Buried under all this news of integration is Gowallas interesting project for the month of December called Gifts on the Go. These are some very cool prizes for simply checking in on Gowalla, of course I’m sure they’d like you to also connect that checkin to Foursquare, Facebook & Twitter to help promote their service. The gifts range from today’s which is a giveaway of 30 iPod Shuffles through to things like three MacBook Air computers on December 23rd and also my personal favorite three GoPro HD Hero Helmet cams on the 15th December.

For the most part this news won’t have a big impact on users of the apps, marketers working on including Location into their marketing mix. Really it’s about the individual organizations behind the apps stake a claim in their section of the location world.

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Filed Under: Facebook, FourSquare, Gowalla, Social Location Sharing, Social Media, Technology, twitter Tagged With: , , , , ,
  • http://twitter.com/tsudo @tsudo

    I don't think the new Gowalla 3 app pulls 4sq tips. You can leave a note for a friend but no 4sq tips (of course I hope to see that change soon.

  • Aaron Strout

    Simon – I like you're thinking here. And where the hell has check.in been all my life? I'm going to slightly disagree with you on the fact that this doesn't mean anything (let's discuss during our panel at UT next weekend). To me, this is a "disintermediation" play by Gowalla which can at least temporarily give them a leg up on foursquare. To that end, if I don't know about check.in yet, probably a lot of people don't know about it. True that only 1M people know about Gowalla but that's probably 900K more than check.in. Either way, this will be interesting to see how this plays out.

    • incslinger

      I definitely agree with you about this being a disintermediation play by Gowalla but I think it is too little too late. See my response to Dana about the lack of PR and brand awareness for Gowalla. That has been my view of them as a team from the start. They wanted to maintain the "cool" factor and be under the radar and hip, which is fine when you are a startup just focusing on the Austin crowd but Location is attracting serious money now and that's no place for people who can't play the big PR games that Foursquare is obviously capable of.

  • dana marruffo

    Seems in this move Gowalla has taken a stake at sprinting ahead of the curve, as you you say the 'social location tour guide', or social location grand-daddy as I say, to place itself as a true market leader in social location apps and not fear the reaper, backlash, nor be afraid to think outside the box and go with it. I also disagree on your claim that it doesn't have an impact to the users. Albeit I haven't tried check.in yet, I feel it'll be a catalyst for more overcrowding and overwhelming content (contests, gifts, actions) for the user and the user's followers. Think 'which way did he go George?' Furthermore..wondering how startups like Hurricane Party will look at getting their two cents in the mix–if any at all. Is this app obsolete already??

    • incslinger

      Dana
      I see this more as a realization on the part of Gowalla that they are just too far behind Foursquare to catch them. Much of that has to do with, in my opinion, how they have eschewed PR. When you have Dennis & Naveen from Foursquare being featured in Gap ads and Josh Williams doesn't even appear at events in Austin you have a serious awareness issue. By trying to stake a claim they are really fencing out an area that was unclaimed and therefore hoping that someone cares enough to see them as leaders in that space.
      Simon

  • http://SocialWayne.com Wayne Sutton

    Thanks for mentioning TriOut. Only time will tell how this works out but I think it's a smart move by Gowalla.

    • incslinger

      No worries Wayne, I think its important to acknowledge here that Gowalla hasn't done anything that teams like yours haven't already rolled out to the world. If they really want to wow the space they need to come up with something radically different.

  • bryan jones

    We are all commenting on a baby that is less than a day old, but what the heck, I'll play along. The announcement of *this changes everything* could be said of this industry weekly and it would be accurate. It's really fun to see society adopt and react to these services at light speed.

    When I saw that Gowalla was reading/writing to Foursquare (and writing to Tumblr) my reaction was, *Wow, Foursquare and Tumblr have become infrastructure.* I expect all social apps to integrate with Facebook and Twitter, looks like Foursquare integration is going to be required for all geo-social apps.