Foursquare, Gowalla and Whrrl…Oh My!
Lately, I have been intrigued by location based social networks. Specifically I have messed around with 3 of them. GoWalla, Foursquare and Whrrl. Let me explain a little bit about what these sites do, and then maybe I can give you a little writeup on each of them.
First of all, these are social networks at heart. Like Facebook, or Twitter, but they are more purposed for posting your location and what you are doing at that location. They range from simple to more detailed. Ive played with all 3 and they are really quite different in their focus.
Second, I am not trying to encourage you to use these applications. Some will enjoy it. Others will hate it. And most will be indifferent. So, this is basically to give you an idea of what each can do. If they look interesting, try them out and tell me what you think. I will only touch the surface of all the detailes of each of these applications. But I will tell you what I have found useful or valuable to me. My biggest thing is, I do not want to add another option to my life. I want to better integrate the options available to me. More function and info, with less places to manage.
All 3 apps include a Web based application as well as iPhone, Blackberry and in some cases Android apps. I of course am using an iPhone, so I am connecting via the apps on my iPhone. In all 3 apps, there did not seem to be something I could do on the web but not on the iPhone. That was a plus for all of them. Drives me nuts when iPhone apps only do half of the features that the web application allows. All 3 of these seem completely functional on the iPhone including friend and settings management.
All 3 apps allow you to search your Facebook and Twitter friends to find people to connect to. They also allow options of searching for local places or people, to connect on a local or regional level. The friend search on Foursquare was the most difficult. It easily connected to facebook and twitter, but searching for places or people was very limited. Almost not functional. I only tried this on the web app.
All 3 services have a similar approach to setting your location or “check in”. They each give basic info about the location, a map to locate the place of interest, and the ability to upload that info to Twitter or Facebook or both.
At this point, the 3 services begin to take different directions of focus…
This is the first one I tried. I was attracted to their iPhone app. Very good looking. Their web app is good too.
Gowalla has a couple features of its own. It highlights a thing called “passport”. As you travel in real life, your passport is stamped with the places you have been. Gowalla does this as well. You gain stamps in your passport as you visit locations…
You also gain pins, as you create new locations or travel to locations multiple times…
This is the “game” portion of Gowalla. Its an opportunity to be the first to do something or have a full passport you can be proud of. This feature (also in Foursquare) is the least of interest to me.
I have used this application the longest, so it was very familiar to me.
Foursquare is the second application I used. I instantly fell in love with this application. When I used Gowalla, I felt a little like I was the only one using it and playing with it. Eventually others joined and I gained more friends there, but when I joined Foursquare, I realized this was where everyone was the whole time. One note. Foursquare is a newer app, that was limited to certain regions. This week, they opened the app up to allow for creating places anywhere. I see this app taking off quickly now.
One thing I like about Foursquare is that it is clean and uncluttered. Simple interface and quick to use. I actually like the iPhone app better than the web app, but that is where I would be recording my locations anyway. So that works for me. The home page gives a quick view of where Ive been. It also has a feature called “tips” I love this! People can leave tips about the places they are visiting. Like special foods or people to ask for, or places to sit so that your not sitting under a cold air vent…
A nice feature in the iPhone app, is the info page on places. When you check into a place, you can find out who else has been there, yelp info and twitter or url info, plus any tips that may have been left by other people…
Foursquare also has the “game” built in. As you create new check in places and visit places, you are given “badges” to add to your collection. You can compete with other friends to see who visits places most as well as become the “mayor” of locations when you have the most visits in a month. Again, these features are of very little, to no use to me…
This is the newest app for me to check out. I have only been playing with it today, but it blows me away. It takes what Gowalla and Foursquare do and adds a bit of steroids to the mix 
In addition to location check ins and bonuses for creating and visiting locations, Whrrl also creates a “story” environment. Essentially, every time you visit a location, you have the chance to allow your friends to follow your story. For instance. Say you are going to downtown Portland for the day. On twitter, we would let people know we are headed to downtown. Then as we visit locations or take photos, we would share those, one by one through twitpic or another service. What Whrrl does is take your trip and put it all into one location. Pictures, notes, locations and all. And then it allows for friends to join in and create a blog style conversation on Whrrl’s site, connected to the “story”. Let me show you what this would look like…
If you look at the pic below, you can see a simple “story” I created this am. I went out for coffee. You can also see that a friend commented on that story. I have the business info. Location map. Reference to what I purchased. And a picture of my purchase. All in one spot. I could have taken multiple pictures while checked into this location. This would come in handy if I checked into a location for an event or dinner. Each subsequent picture would be attached to that location and become a slideshow that friends could view…
The big negative to this…for me…is that it creates a new environment that I need to manage. Instead of having a single place, like Twitter, to reply to all comments, I now have a secondary location where comments and conversation could happen. On the one hand I love the whole idea of creating a “story” and having pics, captions and location info for my evening or event in one place. But this can be done through Posterous or my blog. But, that creates a secondary space to manage as well.
To me though, the greatest feature of Whrrl is its privacy settings. In Foursquare and Gowalla, if you have designated someone as a friend, they receive all of your updates and locations. In Whrrl, you are able to designate friends as “trusted”. And, you can also, for each post, place a privacy setting which allows only certain people or certain information from the post to be seen. This is extremely valuable if you want to tell a “story” about something at home, but you don’t want people to know your location. For example, you create a “story” about having game night at the house. You can caption your photos and upload pics, but your privacy setting determines who, if anyone, sees your actual location. Very nice! You can see the privacy settings below, bottom right…
Another thing that is nice about Whrrl, is that you can combine other users into one story and they can then contribute their own pictures and comments through the evening or event as well. You can see that in the above pic as well. This makes the “story” more interactive and community oriented. This is very cool!
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So, this is a crap load of basic info, regarding some applications that I believe can be very simple or very in depth. From my perspective, Bottom line…
I really like Whrrl, but I have a blog and can archive Posterous uploads there, so I already have a primary place to create “stories”.
Gowalla was fun, but as I am finding, there are not very many people involved in the network in my area, so it is not as resourceful to me as Id like.
I can see myself continuing to use Foursquare. I like the ability to share my locations. Favorite eateries. Favorite places to get a drink or hang out. Favorite foods or shops. I like that. I like how simple Foursquare is. I would love to add pics to my postings, but I have a feeling that Foursquare will include this soon.
But the 2 biggest sells are…
#1 It has the biggest network. I already have more local contacts on Foursquare than I did for the last 6 months on Gowalla. This will prove to be handy to make this app the most resourceful for me.
#2 It easily integrates into what I am already doing. I want to stay in the Blog/Facebook/Twitter world. I don’t want to have to manage another area online. This will allow me to keep all conversation in that world.
So, try them out. Tell me what you think. A whole other conversation, that I chose not to approach in this post, is whether or not this is a complete waste of time or a total lack of privacy. If you want to talk about that…there’s a comment section below
I agree with all your points and will most likely continue to use Foursquare as well. If you look at the mircoblogging arena there was a similar scenario with Twitter and Jaiku. Two years ago Jaiku was the good-looking slightly more feature rich app compared to the bare-bones Twitter (at the time) but due to the larger user base Twitter ended up putting Jaiku out of business (figuratively speaking as it still exists). I think this will be the case with Foursquare over Gowalla. Foursquare has huge metro momentum and people were just waiting for their ‘everywhere else’ version to launch. Quite a few (myself inc.) jumped aboard the Gowalla bandwagon simply due to the fact that it was something to do while waiting for Foursquare to open up. Local example: In my rural area I set up every local venue I visit while using Gowalla. However, in the five days since Foursquare has opened up I’ve been to a handful of places that were already setup and over a dozen unique people had already checked in at. So needless to say people are familiar with the Foursquare name and it has a good deal of momentum behind it. Not to mention that they have apps for all platforms (Blackberry launching this week) vs Gowallas iPhone only (with web app for everyone else).
Ya, Im with you. Gowalla was exactly that for me. Always wanted to try Foursquare, but couldn’t use it yet.
After playing with Whrrl today, it is really cool. BNut totally over kill for what I am looking for.
Here is my problem with all of these types of location based services:
I can already do all of this with Twitter and/or Facebook. They both are now allowing location based sharing. All the people I care about are already one Twitter and/or Facebook so I might as well just use those networks to let people know where I am when I feel it is important to do so.
I actually tend to prefer Loopt because it has no game aspect at all. It is only used to sharing location. That is attractive to me. But even that I use very rarely.
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I understand that Twitter can notify us of where we are…if we tell you, but, Twitter cant do what these services do. I cant get location, business info, tips/tricks, Maps, Yelp info and people who frequent these places from Twitter.
Like I said, some will like this or not, but I’ve found that this integrates nicely into Twitter for me. What I was using multiple tweets for before, I know use one tweet for and Im also resourced a lot of great info from the service.
I mentioned here as well, that the game thing makes no difference to me. And unless I want it to be a part of what I do, it only happens in the background and never is a part of my social flow. So, although I dont care about it, it doesn’t even exist to me at this point.
I have really been digging the connections i’m making with people on foursquare. It’s not another social network so much as a doorway into your social networks from the real world.
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I totally agree. I see it the same way. Very easily integrated in to my social network life and it’s creating some new local relationships already!
Brent,
Very thoughtful and well done blog post on your experience with different LBS services. Thank you for including us. I wanted to add a comment. As opposed to gaming, Whrrl’s singular purpose is real-world discovery.
Take a look at Whrrl Societies- On Whrrl, you are grouped into micro-communities based on your physical world patterns. For example, if you go to indie music venues, we’ll group you into the Indie Music Society where you can discover new indie music places or activities. We can set up a Society based on your ministry or places to volunteer.
Thank you for the feedback. We are excited about where the service is going. You and all your readers can contact me anytime: johnkim (at) pelago.com or on Twitter @jkimlosangeles
John, thanks for your comment. Your comment proves to me that Whrrl gets it and wants to create an amazing user experience.
I also appreciate that you haven’t come here to sell me on your product. You have aimed huge respect from me.
I am blown away by what Whrrl is capable of. And I love what you’ve just described as well.
Thanks for the hard work you guys are doing to build this site!
Considering I live in Sydney, one of the original FourSquare cities, I’ve always had trouble finding other users…until it opened up last week. I think the publicity helped, and there’s now lots more happening on it than Gowalla.
So, much as I will miss the Gowalla kangaroo/wallaby/whateveritis app icon (how shallow am I?), Foursquare is what I’ll be using from now on.
I think…
It was that iPhone icon and app that interested me in Gowalla in the first place
Thanks for the info and the write-ups man. I am always looking for new apps and well, these certainly look pretty interesting!!
Let me know what you think!
Nice post, I also (as non iPhone user) find Foursquare my favourite even though the community in Rome is very limited. In the past I used Plazes a lot, that unfortunately stopped developing after its acquisition by Nokia, and old good Brightkite. But I find useful the social aspect of tips on 4S.
Love the tips!
I tried Brightkite for a while and it just didnt click for me.
so .. how do you “check in”?
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Are you an iPhone or Blackberry dude? Did you download the app for your phone? If you did, you check in through the phone.
Ill have to show you in Nashville
I think we’re going to see a lot of mobile, location-based microblogging in the coming months.
I’ve used Brightkite for a few years, but they recently took away the ability to find places by getting your current location.
Gowalla is dead to me, since it’s incompatible with the iPod touch. It won’t even install on it.
Foursquare is pretty neat, although I still can’t figure out how to check in from the website; I can do it via the app, though.
I like what you said about Whrrl. It looks like it creates a digital scrapbook of an event. I might look into that.
As with any of these, they become more useful, the more people you know start using them.
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I was looking for a roundup and discussion like this, thanks. I guess you can throw in Yelp and My Town in the next round.
Every place I walk in, I check in with Yelp, Whrrl and My Town, to see if one day I can figure out why I am doing it. I will have to check out FourSquare and Gowalla, but checking in with 5 apps may be too much even for me.
Just a reminder, Yelp is a part of Foursquare. So you can check out Yelp info while checking into places through Foursquare. kind of handy.
So that’s why everybody is calling Yelp’s move to introduce their own checkins a slap in FourSquare’s face.
I think Yelp feels left out and wants to join in. But their service is about location, its about information. they need to stick with that.
When you say “part”, you mean FourSquare integrates Yelp reviews? Or that it owns Yelp?
Brent, are you sure about it? I never heard that 4S bought Yelp, it was actually Google who tried but the offer was rejected
Definitely need clarification.
Foursquare does not own Yelp. Foursquare integrates their reviews into their app.
Got it. But maybe that’s just for the iPhone app, not on other platforms.
Yes, if you notice my pic under the Foursquare writeup, you’ll see the iphone app allows for this.
The web app seems to be more about management, than check in. The Mobile apps (which is where you would check in most the time anyway) is about the check ins and info regarding those check ins.
If you guys are Mac users, heres a nice new app, where you can follow along and check in from your Mac…
http://codebutler.github.com/foursquarex/
By the way, I am all for what Whrrl is trying to do, but I am thoroughly disheartened and dumbfounded by the lack of adoption. I have been on it for close to a year and have exactly one “friend”: Whrrl’s own marketing person, whose job it is to become everybody’s friendand who is over a thousand miles away. I have not seen any checkins or stories around my area, have not gotten any comments on my stories or friend invites. On Yelp, it took two days of active yelping to get three friend invites and plenty of comments.
Whrrl will have to overcome it’s quiet nature for sure. Services like Gowalla and Foursquare are gaining steam fast. Whrrl is alos very much like creating a pot on Tumblr or Posterous. Many people are already there and dont see the need to move over.
By quiet nature do you mean not integrating with Facebook with and Twitter? Seems that’s the only way anyone can break into the game any longer.
Actually Whrrl is pretty active on Twitter through employees and leaders there.
I mostly meant, they need a bigger voice. Foursquare is heavily noticed right now, because of their presence and popularity. i dont see Whrrl gaining any speed without that perfect media storm for them
Here’s a (possibly) interesting tidbit for you. At my place of business, Whrrl, Gowalla and FourSquare are blocked by BlueCoat proxy. I am not even going to mention Twitter and Facebook, that’s a given.
Who’s left? Yelp.
What does this prove? If anything, that Yelp is not officially seen as a social network. Yet.
Maybe subject for another post?
The social web word is definitely frowned upon on many businesses. Its a shame they dont get it yet, and how it can actually help them.
I dont foresee Yelp crossing over into the social world. I see it as continuing to be informational. With check ins.
If it does, than maybe a blog post wil be in order
Hi, I am looking for the API datasource available that privides city guide, venue information, similar to those provided by Foursquare, Gowalla and other check-in services.
I am Japanese and I know such datasources here in Japan, but don’t know which API datasource is available in other countries.
Do you know which API Foursquare, Gowall or other check-in services are using as the datasource?
Please tell me the API datasource available in the United States. (and Canada, Australia, EU countries, if possible)
Thanks in advance!
If possible, please tell me about in Canada, Australia, and EU countries.
I don’t know, but you could start here and go from there…
http://foursquare.tumblr.com/post/246291833/we-heard-you-like-apis
It would be nice to have somekind of converter/interoperable database. If I want to try Foursquare or Whrrl, it would be quite the bummer to have to start from scratch and re-enter all 600 spots I’ve worked so hard to obtain in Gowalla.
Each one is a significant investment of time, and those “stamps” you collect are valuable…