Today we had an active discussion on Twitter (for the 10,000th time) regarding the whole Geo-Social showdown between Gowalla and Foursquare. I have summarized some of my thoughts that I took from this conversation below as well as some insight provided by people in my network. I have also posed some questions below that I would love to have your feedback on so please feel free to comment your thoughts…
———————————–
Being a die-hard Gowalla fan as well as a loyal user I have a hard time buying into the statement that Foursquare is the best geo-social application to get behind. A common response that I get back from my network of followers is that Foursquare is better for businesses.
Every time I hear this I keep thinking that maybe I am missing something with Foursquare that I should learn more about but the best that I can come up with is the fact that Foursquare has these listed features for businesses that more or less allow business owners to post messages to users who are in the area to entice them to visit an establishment. Foursquare also allows owners the opportunity to offer specials to Mayors and those who have loyalty points (# of check-ins). I guess I can sort of see where everyone is coming from on their position that Foursquare might be better than Gowalla in this one aspect, but overall Gowalla has a much better product and user experience. As a developer and a business owner, I can attest to the fact that user experience and application quality go a long way!!!
I posed the question today on Twitter: What makes Foursquare better for businesses than Gowalla? and I didn’t get any really concrete or specific answers back from very many people. Keith Crawford brought up the fact that Gowalla really needed to address business users, and I agree w/ that point. Natalie Ghidotti mentioned that Foursquare did a better job connecting users to businesses w/ mayorships, etc. and I can sort of see that point of view as well, but doesn’t the idea of picking up items on Gowalla that can be exchanged for tangible items such as appetizers, t-shirts, phone cases, etc., sort of counteract that? Not to mention making it more fun when you win these items? Furthermore, to counteract the loyalty aspect of Foursquare (ie. mayorships, # of checkins, etc.) couldn’t Gowalla’s leaderboard also answer that one?
Not too far into this debate, I posted links to the online location profile for Pleth, LLC in Conway from both locations (Gowalla: Pleth, LLC and Foursquare: Pleth, LLC) to demonstrate that from a desktop browser perspective there really wasn’t much difference between the two. It wasn’t long after this that a representative from Gowalla, @SanLei came into the conversation and had me refresh my browser to see my Pleth location page again. She had added my company information, twitter handle, and stream into my profile page. All day long during this conversation we never heard a word from Foursquare.
Bryan Jones also weighed in saying that he also leans toward Gowalla over Foursquare for similar reasons that I do, Quality over Quantity. Mark Ferguson also weighed in saying that he preferred getting items for prizes than becoming a mayor of a particular establishment, and I think I am inclined to agree w/ his position as well.
- Here’s my thing, isn’t the user experience going to win out every time?
- Does anyone disagree w/ my position that Gowalla has a much better user experience?
- What does Gowalla need to do to address / encourage Business Use?
I personally am a Gowalla fan as well. The thing to remember that Gowalla is quite a bit younger than 4square. True both started officially at SXSW 09, 4square really began in 2005 as dodgeball.
Gowalla's approach was to take one platform and try to get the best product possible on the user end. So it comes across as a bit more polished as opposed to 4square. 4Square to me just seemed to take all their goals for the platform and throw it out there at once. While this has generated a significant number of users and praise from the business side, I am not so sure that it is the best long term strategy. Of course social media start ups are not exactly known for their strategy.
Gowalla will have to focus on the business side soon. Currently all they offer as business solutions is sponsored items, which for the record are not cheap. I see Gowalla building a back end to allow tracking of number of checkins and such like 4square soon. Gowalla soon will open up Andriod and Blackberry, which should spread the appeal a little further.
I think one of the killer features of Gowalla however is something they just rolled out today which is the ability to do temporary checkins around events. I could see this being huge for us at Tweetups and other events that we put on. To me it is Gowalla having a better understanding of the user than 4square. They make checkins fun with items and custom badges, and make it easy with what seems to be better location management and now events.
You made a lot of good points, the statement that social media startups are not known for their strategies is probably the understatement of the year, lol. I do see Gowalla taking a pretty big leap when they expand their offerings to android and blackberry users. It's going to be the friends of the android and blackberry users that are already established on one of the two networks that dictate which geo-social application they go with too. From that point on it's going to become a percentage game. I am also glad you touched on the temporary check-in thing, I haven't actually researched that out too much other than just seeing it was launched today. That also has a lot of potential for events like Toad Suck Daze, etc.
Greg i completely agree that the Gowalla Events is a major step forward
I would have to agree with you Cotton. I have always leaned more towards Gowalla. The user experience seems more fluid. I'm not fond of apps that can be easily gamed(=spam), however from what I have read they seem to have improved that aspect requiring you are in proximity to the location. I am “checking in” less and less with foursquare.
I've yet to see a real solution allowing a business to reward or connect to it's social app crowd. Gowalla's leader board seems to be the most accurate way to see user loyalty. Business owners could use that to personally reach out and reward its users. Not sure if anything can replace that personal thank you.
We've only scratched the surface of these types of apps.
I know exactly where you are coming from too about how Foursquare is easily gamed. As a matter of fact, today I was able to sit at Doctor Rook's office and check-in at Toad Suck Square and a few businesses on Oak Street from the waiting room. LOL, they still don't have that locked down on Foursquare. There is still a little bit of bleedover w/ the positioning on Gowalla as well but I don't find it to be as dramatic.
I think Foursquare has addressed the ability to game the system. The recent app update and reported magic behind the scenes of m.foursquare.com checkins is definitely giving their checkins more credibility.
As I mentioned to Nick, I was able to sit in my doctors office and check in at Toad Suck Square here in Conway but I just checked iTunes and I have a Foursquare update available (yeah I am out of date) so maybe that has been addressed in the upgrade, but as of today I was still able to check in at 3 or 4 places that I shouldn't have been able to check in. I am sure though that over time they will address this.
Latest version doesn't rewards points/badges if you aren't close enough. Try after the update.
I think Gowalla's big advantage is creating context around location. Events, photos, and comments all allow you add deeper value. This contextual data goes beyond the basics like name, address, phone number.
Photos and comments allow you to discover not just who is at a location, but what they think about, what they are doing, and what they are experiencing.
Events give you an idea of not just what places are around you and who is at them. It lets you know why people are going there.
That's a good point. For a while the big thing about Loopt was that you could add photos to check-ins. Now that Gowalla has added that functionality I think it really added value to it's product. Thanks for bringing those things up because I don't think we even touched on any of that today in our discussions.
As I later tweeted, how does foursquare scale? Rewarding the mayor when you have had 40 unique users is fine but what about 400 users? Say 100 are “regulars” of them MAYBE 10 have any chance of being mayor, 90% of your regulars have no chance of earning the mayor reward. As a user loyalty program that's terrible.
Gowalla items are just scratching the surface. As I mentioned the NJ Nets had a recent promotion where Gowalla Nets tickets were placed at local sports bars and other places and could be redeemed for real tickets. Users who checked in during the game were entered to win prizes.
Think of potential here. You check in at the airport waiting for your bags and find a discount coupon for a shuttle service or you find cheese sticks you can redeem at a local restaurant for a free appetizer with your meal. Imagine Riverfest working with Gowalla and their sponsors so that if you check in at a sponsor location you would have a chance to find a Riverfest button redeemable for a free ticket or River money you can redeem for discounted tickets, or discounted river money or a free shirt or can cooler, etc. Then when you go to Riverfest and check in you can find items that promote sponsors.
Gowalla items take you out of the realm of easy loyalty program to a real promotional vehicle.
Exactly. You nailed it dude.
I'll add my voice to the crowd. Personally I like Gowalla much better but I've got issues with it:
1) Items: love the concept but I've dropped almost everything I have and I get very very little in return. Once we see real world benefits this will drastically change but as of now gameplay is lacking for me. Of course I don't think mayorships in 4sq will keep me around.
2) Business accounts: Without them they go nowhere. I'm okay with waiting but I'd like to see some an official roadmap or timeline to show me they are working on them.
3) Comments and Picks are great but without notifications of someone commenting on your status we miss most of the interaction
4) Right now the tips near me feature in 4square is useful. That's a BIG word in geosocial. Gowalla is fun, well developed, and a much more robust system but not much usefulness in it. I find great dishes, insider tips, and inside jokes via Foursquare that enhance my IRL experience. I've got a ton of examples and all of them lead straight to 4sq.
No one would be happier to see Gowalla take a prominent position and their engagement and development is far beyond 4sq but its time to take the next steps.
I got to thinking today why Gowalla wouldn't at least tease us w/ some sort of business offering blog post outlining what they have planned (and you know they have some things in the works) but realized that if I was them I probably wouldn't show my hand either. The whole Geosocial thing right now is just about as competitive as we have seen in recent times, i bet they only share roadmaps and ideas w/ their core group on a need to know basis. I know I probably would. I also agree w/ you on the comments thing, I have left numerous comments on peoples check-in status's and I am pretty sure they are unaware.
The item problem is user base. Look at major venues like the Empire State Building or Golden Gate Bridge. Foursquare is just way ahead right now.
Gowalla seems to be very cautious in it's business roadmap. The NJ Nets promotion suggests to me they are feeling out the path with care with some limited experiments.
Good point. Yeah, Gowalla seems to me to pretty well put together (or as well put together as tech startups can be these days) and if they are proceeding w/ caution and putting a lot of thought into their roadmap it will pay off. Look at Twitter, can you imagine where they would be right now had they had an entire year off to plan their rollout? I can remember signing up for my twitter account back in 07 and none of us really even knew what it was about or what to expect.
Word on the street is there are some more promotions that should be announced soon. See me Thu night