Foursquare Versus Gowalla: A Comparison Revived Social Media Simplify Foursquare Versus Gowalla: A Comparison Revived Social Media Simplify

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15 September, 2011

Foursquare Versus Gowalla: A Comparison Revived




If you ask the question – ‘is there a battle between the new avatar of Gowalla and Foursquare?’ My straight answer would be “NO”.

Gowalla or any other location based social network/platform like Whrrl, Yelp, Loopt, Sonar or Facebook Places never has risen to the level of Foursquare. The reason is simple; Foursquare simplifies the check-in process even if you are holding an old school GPRS phone. I just hope that you enjoyed Foursquare while you were using a GPRS phone down the memory lanes like me.

The Scene So Far: For a good length of time, Gowalla was considered to be the lone competitor to Foursquare especially after Facebook wrapped up its places and Whrrl sold out to Groupon.


Both Gowalla and Foursquare started in the year 2009 in SXSW, but in the due course of time Foursuare has been left as the leader of social check-in platforms. And it literally happened with the announcement on 12th Sept from the co-founder of Gowalla Josh Williams.




As per the Techcrunch post, Gowalla guys were always thinking & experimenting more and more. The result that Gowalla is today came from a backstage of several months of planning and research done by the core team. Today the latest version of Gowalla is 4.0 with new features like ‘story’ and ‘guide’. So, in a simplified way, Gowalla is trying to become a mobile travel-guide with the goodness of the commodity called check-ins.


Foursquare vs. Gowalla:


Concept: With this new intention to become a mobile travel-guide with its existing data collected from the loyal user base across the globe, Gowalla posses a good future despite the fact that hundreds of other travel-guide platforms are already there. This way it never stands in the way of check-in giant Foursquare.


Sharing on Other Platforms: Both Gowalla and Foursquare comes with the sharing option to other social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Whereas, Foursquare allows you to check-in, the new Gowalla now allows you tell the story and even add pictures along with the check-in.


So, in Foursquare if you get the badge “Swarm Badge Party” for checking-in with most no. of users/friends, you are sure to tell a good “Story” on Gowalla.


Specials: Whereas Foursuare has badges to offer, Gowalla still posseses the old way of passport and Pins to be collected as earlier. You should give it a gig if you reside in any of the places it has on its list. Foursquare let's you create your business page automatically, whereas on new Gowalla we are not that sure about the business presence.


The Location that Matters: Foursquare is something universal (it even goes to the space). And this is the point where Gowalla was and is inferior to Foursquare. Yes, Gowalla possesses lesser data than Foursquare as the inclusion of new places is much easier and simpler in Foursquare. Imagine yourself in a new place and you can check-in with Foursquare anyway; but if it were Gowalla, definitely you had had a fad on faith. 




Whether it is for bad or good, with the revived version of Gowalla, finally, the check-in war of giants is over and Foursquare is the winner.


So, go collect some badges instead of pins, you would enjoy it.





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