I’m always fascinated by new releases, as design changes offer the outsider a glimpse into a company’s strategy.
Foursquare and Gowalla have just pushed out major releases to their iPhone applications. When the two leaders of a brand new industry offer updates on the same day, it gives the rest of us a wonderful opportunity to reflect on where each company – and the social geoloaction space – is headed.
Here is a side by side comparison of the primary screens:
Some closing thoughts.
Foursquare has closed the UI gap – both of these apps are pleasing to use now.
The Foursquare and Gowalla apps are both copying each other, and as a result, are coming closer together in terms of experience.
Foursquare now has a Passport, errr, self profile view, and venue icons.
Gowalla is downplaying the item collection / packrat aspect of its game.
Indeed, the primary difference between the two companies seems to be in the industries that they are trying to disrupt.
Foursquare is trying to disrupt the local yellow pages / local directory space. Tips are offered to folks who have already arrived at a venue.
Gowalla is trying to disrupt the travel industry. Trips our offered for folks who are touching down in a new city, and photo functionality has been added – critical in the travel space. Note how Gowalla doesn’t offer any search and discovery.
This difference in strategy is represented by the letter “R” – Gowalla gives a tab to “Trips” and Foursquare gives a tab to “Tips.”
Thoughts on these two releases?
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=afb5f02d-9e34-4d5b-91da-17634fc9e463 "photo")
Great stuff. Still preferring Gowalla but Foursqaure's UI has clearly taken a step into the right direction.
Thanks, and agreed with a slight nod to Gowalla's UI still, but Foursquare's seems “good enough.”
There are Photos (Gowalla). And Comments (which can be tips) on Spots (Gowalla). :)
That's a good point. I probably should have called out the photo functionality via a screenshot as opposed to just mentioning it in passing – it's new functionality.
Also, the commenting on check-ins is worth mentioning as well.
You shouldn't be comparing Stamps (Gowalla) with Badges (foursquare) as badges equivalent in Gowalla are pins.
You're probably right. Pins are a little better than Stamps, though there is a little bit of overlap. Foursquare has venue specific badges, for example – much like Stamps.
I agree that there is some overlap, but the venue-specific badges are very rare. Also, Gowalla has items, which foursquare is missing and at the same time foursquare has points, which are useless for now. I think by the addition of photos & comments (which I don't see on their web-based version yet), Gowalla is definitely leading now and is pretty much ahead of even Brightkite feature-wise, but still behind in terms of adoption. Once Brightkite adds their multi-checkin capability, Gowalla/foursquare clients will become less relevant, I guess. I hate the double-checkin I have to do right now.
I'm probably going to post on that meta check-in play by Brightkite. We considered building that a few months ago when it became clear that no single player was going to run away with this. We ended up deciding that a feature like that would be used by You, Me, and maybe 100 other people. Good for tech blog fodder, not so good for going mainstream.
This is a really helpful comparison. In fact, you've done such a nice job here, you've pre-empted one of my previously planned blog posts.
I wanted to add that Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley recently posted a particularly insightful comment to clarify his position after an interview with Jay Yarow. To his credit, Jay updated his post to incorporate Dens' comment.
I'll paste it here because I think it captures the essence of the key differentiator between the growing number of location-based social networking apps:
Joe, thanks. I think that quote might explain in part Foursquare's decision to invest in a business dashboard now…who better to incentivize Foursquare users than the businesses themselves?
Nice side by side comparison. I am a prolific traveler, so Gowalla has held my attention from the start. Two things are missing in this comparison that I see as keys to Gowalla's appeal.
First, the 'Venue View' does not do justice to the maps and location feature of Gowalla which is found by clicking 'Details and Maps'. Doing this reveals a map that is larger and more visible than its FourSquare counterpart.
Secondly, it is Gowalla that uses the term Passport. (These terms are essentially transposed above the view here). Clicking the 'Items I am Carrying' tab in the Gowalla passport reveals the heart and soul of Gowalla ~ the virtual goods, as it were. There is room in the passport for 10 portable items. The entire set of items is now over 120. A huge part of Gowalla is the scavenger hunt for these items, which results in meet-ups with friends, item swaps set up via Twitter, and exchanges and interesting forays 'into the wild' for those who enjoy this aspect of the app. Additionally, Items can be placed in a permanent collection that is visible on the web passport page. The web passport now displays photos of check-ins, which adds value to this aspect as a it is now a 'virtual scrapbook' of places visited. http://gowalla.com/checkins/4545423 .
Thanks Beth. I like the items as well, and think the Passport metaphor is perfect for Gowalla. I was disappointed to see the items seemingly downgraded in this release (though I've heard whispers that they are actually being upgraded). Thoughts?
Gowalla is horrendous to use on Android. This is where it falls down for me. The whole world isnt iPhone and as has been reported iPhone usage isn't growing whereas the other platforms are.
But, I'm trying them both out for a few months, its annoying not being able to add venues or even search for them in Gowalla (android) so i could barely check in last night when i was out and about. its a shame really
Hello Lawrence,
Nice comparative article. I am using Foursquare and like it.
Do you have any idea of adoption rate for either app? Is Gowalla popular in North America, mostly heard of it in Europe.
KC.
As far as I could read it, Foursquare is 4 times bigger than gowalla regarding the number of checkins.
Too bad as I largely prefer Gowalla.