Posted on Monday, March 22nd, 2010 by Annat Katz
Gowalla – Location-based phone apps are, some say, the next direction of social networks. Foursquare, one of the big fish in the position-based social networks pond, already scored the Weekly Fave spot on All My Faves back in October. What many people don’t know is that at the same time Foursquare was launched, so was a serious counterpart, Gowalla. The reason the former got all the media attention is that Gowalla initially had more bugs and its development team had some fine tuning to do before the app could stand as a worthy ‘innovative location service’ player.
Today Gowalla is virtually bug-free, looks amazing and is an absolute must mobile app you should tap into. Compatible with the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm and other devices, this location-based application is a fine piece of social network heaven on earth. Although the basic concept and service of Gowalla and Foursquare are the same, Gowalla is available anywhere, has a sexier (much sexier) interface, and its badges (or ‘pins’) look much better than Foursquare’s. Perhaps the looks of an app isn’t as important as its functionality, but in the case of Gowalla, they aced these two parameters like a true pro.
The only downside to this app is that contrary to Foursquare, Gowalla produces exact GPS location of its users, while its nemesis offers a location ‘fuzzing’ feature for those who do not wish to disclose of their exact location to the rest of the community. For more on the Foursquare-Gowalla face-off, read this. See the screen shots below to get a feel of Gowalla’s magic.
