Although not all folks maybe aware of foursquare and gowalla (a Forrester research article mentioned here states “of the wider group of US internet users, found that only 4% had used check-in apps like foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt, and only 1% checked in at least weekly”) I am not going to dwell on what the services are but instead reflect on how I use them differently. There has probably been enough said about the services themselves, which in my view is fair enough! ;-)
I am a big fan of LBS services since being able to play around with them a little in my final days at Yahoo! At that time I had an external Nokia GPS that I would try with moderate success to connect to various different mobiles via Bluetooth in order to experiment with some LBS services that we were designing and developing as part of a 20% project. A lot of the ideas that we were playing with 4 years ago have now found there way into check-in services like foursquare and Gowalla which has definitely fuelled my interest in them. I am very happy to see that not all of the ideas we were throwing about have eventuated in the early versions of these check-in services though and note that API ’s exist now for both services! I need to get of my backside and start playing again! Also possibly have a look at the Google places API ;-) Will explore these separately though at a later time! That being said the existance of developer API's is another reason though why I like these products. While folks at Gowalla and foursqaure will be feverishly working away on new features, at the same time anyone can come up with a good idea and use the API ’s to deliver their own service. More on this at a later date though. I do wander if we were given the chance at Yahoo! whether they would have needed to try and buy foursquare for $125 million ;-). Probably!! :-))
Anyway enough rubbish reminicsing! I use both foursquare and Gowalla actively, but dependant on my situation, and due to the different product designs, I use them very differently. I find foursquare to be a little more competitive and game like. This is due to the fact that mayoral-ships are a core feature of the product. As an example if you are the mayor of a certain place, i.e. you are the person who has checked in the most at a specific location, you may well be entitled to a discount. As an example, the Breakfast Club in Islington offers a 20% discount to the current Mayor.
It is the competitive urge that drives frequent check-ins at places that I regularly visit. I am in competition with one friend over a specific mayoral-ship that I will probably never get! When notified that she has checked in at this place I regularly text her saying I will expose her as a foursquare cheat if it has been a stealth check-in, i.e. checking in when not actually at the location! I don’t think I will ever be mayor of Sushi World but every time I go there I definitely check in as a priority! So foursquare has become quite competitive resulting in me checking in to places, I visit regularly, often.
Gowalla on the other hand, has a far less competitive design. Although you can see if you are the person who has checked into a location the most, there is no concept of awarding prizes for being the mayor of places. On foursquare for instance you get a badge if you are the mayor of 10 different locations at the one time. In Gowalla you have your own passport in which you collect stamps for each place you visit. I really like this concept as it encourages you to check in to more and different places. For me this ‘game play’ drives more discoverability within your area. That is if you are a passport stamp collecting junkie like me ;-). I really like the country pins that you also get as an additional bonus when you check into a place within a new country that you are visiting on holidays. Living in the EU where passports are almost never checked when you cross a boarder this is a new method to get that stamp in your passport! My real passport is almost empty! My Gowalla passport now contains 6 country pins. My real passport has one.
So although I enjoy them both, I use foursquare and Gowalla very differently. Foursquare has the competitive edge, despite the fact I will never be the mayor of Shushi World! Gowalla, and I guess it’s a personal competition as opposed to a competition against others, in order to collect stamps in a passport. One drives usage within the locations I go to regularly, the other, for me, encourages exploring further things. It’s probably for this reason that at the moment Gowalla has the edge for me, although I do really like foursquare as well. To be honest I am reasonably fickle with which one is my favourite at any given time. I use both, and it probably comes down to which of the newest features that I like most in each tips the scales at any given moment! ;-)
There is one thing about Gowalla that I don’t like though. This is that I can view anybodies check-in stream irrespective if they are my friend or not. This really doesn’t sit well. On foursquare however I have to be logged in to view peoples checkin streams and can only see them if connected to them. The security for Gowalla is too light in my mind and I think that folks will start to question this further. I think Gowalla could do well to sort this out moving forward!
This product space has so much to offer still and I think once users are able to manage their own security, with respect to their location, more tightly, then we will see far more people than the current 1% of US Internet users using check in services. Now to have a look at their API ’s and start to play ;-) Well maybe that can wait until chores are done.
Cheers
m
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