If you track such things, you will have noted a substantial rise in the noise around the mobile, location-based startup called Gowalla. It and Foursquare are the two apparent front runners in the space.
Taking a cue from UFC, and the world of non-gladiatorial sporting, there is nothing like a small competition to clear the air. Gowalla is built by Alamofire, a company that has been around for a few years, and has raised ten million dollars. Foursquare on the other hand, is less than a year old, and has raised less than 14% as much as Alamofire.
To commence, which service has more traffic to their websites? Not a perfect comparison, given that both have applications for mobile devices, but it can still be illuminating. According to Compete:
Score one point Foursquare, for being several multiples larger. Not a good start for Gowalla. Continuing the one on one comparisons, let’s take a look at total Twitter followers and lists. Foursquare: 15,354 followers, 1,161 lists. Gowalla: 4,226 followers, and 347 lists. Another point to Foursquare.
But all that is ancillary, what we really want to know is how the two apps are doing in the mobile space. We’ll use data from the iTunes App store, as it has the largest sample.
In the app store, Gowalla is the 9th most popular social networking application, and the 147th most popular application in the store as a whole. Gowalla has only recently popped onto the top apps chart, but seems to be holding itself well. Take a look, data via TopAppCharts:
Foursquare clocks in as the 21st most popular application in social networking, not even popping onto the most downloaded charts. Take a look:
Well, it appears that we get to give Gowalla the point, at least for now, of winning the download war. Of course, we do not have longer historical data, and Foursquare could theoretically have more total downloads. However, right now, Gowalla is garnering more users, more quickly. Perhaps closing cities off was not such a good plan, after all.
Finally, let’s get a measurement on the buzz of each product. Google trends is a very useful tool for such comparisons. Let’s get a graph:
Now, Foursquare is a term that is use in other places, so we only want to look at the rise in the searchers for it, opposed to its historical average. Even discounting for the past, Foursquare is obviously a rising trend. Take a look at the spike in relation to past years. Gowalla appears just a minute ago, but is growing quickly.
So what do we have? Gowalla has more money and downloads at the moment, while Foursquare has more Twitter followers, traffic to its website, and search buzz. I had been hoping for a more clear breakdown. Let’s put it like this: at the moment Fourquare appears to be ahead, but Gowalla is growing very quickly, and has a number of celebrity users (such as Kevin Rose) who pimp the service constantly.
For the moment Foursquare, but in six months, it is anyone’s game.
Interesting comparison Alex. I’d say that both are likely to be ‘fad’ hits. They’ll both grow but location-based gaming is still in its infancy. We’ll see many more games spring up in time.
The potential for monetisation here is huge. The idea of ‘treasure hunts’ using Gowalla items has big potential for brand tie-ins.
They’re far neater an idea than Foursquare ‘Mayor deals’ which can easily be gamed or rendered pointless. If I worked at a cafe I’d constantly be mayor because I’d check in far more often than any customer.
let’s see how that ends up leandro… i would say it can go both ways.
My decision is simple, Gowalla do not restrict you to some cities.
The source of tweets may be a good measure because both are similarly integrated into twitter, and twitter is a good mirror of the user base.
Beside the stats in the article, my 2 cents:
- Fourthsquare’s iPhone App is profoundly unstable.
- Gowalla’s UI and look & feel are head and shoulders better (iPhone App as well as web site). Whereas Foursquare looks kind of retro style, doesn’t it.
- Gowalla’s gaming facet featuring items that can be dropped an picked up looks extremely promising to me (imagine you find a “Starbucks” Coffee or an “AVIS” car key at any Gowalla Location)
- From a technical point of view, Gowalla’s auto detection of places and set-up process for new places is way better than Foursquare’s abilities. With Foursquare, I got – repeatedly – automatically logged in at Starbucks places that were literally like 5 miles away from my current location – just because there was ANY place named “Starbucks” in Hamburg already…
However – maximum surprise – most of my buddies use Foursquare. And as any social app isn’t much fun if it seems you are on your own, I kind of revitalized Foursquare using currently both Foursquare and Gowalla… one moment this, the next that.
One fatal flaw in this comparison is the fact that you don’t have to download anything or even have an iPhone to use Foursquare.
How do you account for people who simple use Foursquare via SMS? Also, unless Gowalla plans on expanding their offerings, they will never have the potential to grow as big as Foursquare because they are limited to iPhone users.
Someone correct me if Gowalla has SMS or apps for other devices. I keep hanging around thinking they might expand, but haven’t noticed any changes.
Gowalla is a hell of a lot better. The interface is awesome, it works in all cities, and the guys making are great too.
I think in a year or so everyone will have a laugh about this stuff. At the end of the day they’re both games and games come & go in popularity.
Honestly the one that will go mainstream won’t be either Foursquare or Gowalla it will be some as-yet-undetermined geo game that merges Foursquare-type activity with FarmVille or something. You’ll check in your cow at 7-Eleven yadda yadda.
These apps will be remembered as tiny notches on the timeline of mobile game history…
I wish both of them would simply finish the job.
I am so sick of apps in this space that:-
- Don’t go international from day one
- Use the flawed “craigslist” model of restricting you to certain cities
- Don’t offer any RSS or personal RSS
- Don’t use Firefox geolocation, Loki or the other automatic location systems
- Are iPhone only and/or have no useful web UI
- Don’t publish the Geo data to Geo aware systems like Twitter and don’t use the existing ICBM metadata in web pages
- Ignore all the work on privacy done by people like FireEagle
And so on. Come on guys go and learn from the Twitter experience. Provide a simple API and lots of metadata. Growth comes from a healthy 3rd party ecosytem of developers as much as from VC backed marketing.
Foursquare does have the upper hand in the Android segment, since Gowalla hasn’t got an Android app yet.
The thing that strikes me is that if Facebook introduces a location aspect, then these services will become largely irrelevant. Why would I build up a profile on another service when all my friends are on Facebook already?
Yelp could own this scen if they jumped on it. They already have the venue info, ratings, community, and more. This space is really exciting!
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Rahsheen says: December 6, 2009 at 8:15 pm
One fatal flaw in this comparison is the fact that you don’t have to download anything or even have an iPhone to use Foursquare.
How do you account for people who simple use Foursquare via SMS? Also, unless Gowalla plans on expanding their offerings, they will never have the potential to grow as big as Foursquare because they are limited to iPhone users.
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+1 Gowalla being restricted only to the iPhone is a non-starter for me because I don’t plan on getting an iPhone.
Actually, Gowalla was international from Day One: it works everywhere, and always has. It also has never had city restrictions.