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…
Gowalla
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
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…
Whrrl
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
