Gowalla's new icon

Gowalla has always been seen as foursquare’s lesser. The Austin based startup wanted to create a check in network that was created socially, instead of done by the developers like Foursquare’s network. While this was an admiral goal, Gowalla just never seemed to pick up as much steam. In the middle of this conflict Facebook decided to launch Places, their check in network. Now Facebook had the most users because of its engrained user base, and Gowalla sank to third. I’m sure the team was having a meeting where they decided that the best thing to do for their company was to stop trying to fight the battle alone, but to work with its competition.

Gowalla announced its third big iteration, and it changed everything. They implemented the API’s of both Facebook and Foursquare into their application. Now users can check in inside of the Gowalla app and be able to send that to all of their networks. Gowalla shifted from just another check in service to the one app you need to stay in contact with your friends locally. This is accentuated by the new activity feed, which can pull your friends check ins from all the services, not just Gowalla.

This new approach will help Gowalla gain a larger user base because of its convenience. Users will no longer have to open multiple apps and do multiple check ins just to show their fragmented friend lists where they are.

Gowalla will still need to get more press and users, which has always been its problem. While this update is being talked about in the tech space, it has yet to really reach mainstream media. Gowalla is number 30 in the list of social network apps on the iPhone with Foursquare at 21 and Facebook still as number 1. If Gowalla can make it to the front page then I could see it sticking there for some time.

gowalla's new interface