Gowalla 3.0 Adds Foursquare, Facebook Places Integration
Gowalla 3 is gorgeous! Even though I’m still on-the-fence in terms of my personal checking-in habits, Cameron Moll’s thoughts here are spot on:
Founder Josh Williams:
Gowalla is now the easiest and best way to keep up with your friends across services with a combined activity tab that merges the whereabouts of your Gowalla, Facebook and Foursquare friends. Additionally, Gowalla now supports checking in on both Facebook Places and Foursquare in addition to sharing with both Twitter and Tumblr.
I’d say this was a gutsy move by the Gowalla team, but that wouldn’t be true — rest assured this was a very calculated move.
From what I can tell, none of the three leading services (Gowalla, Foursquare, Facebook Places) have hit critical mass yet, so they’re all vying for attention from — and leadership among — users. It’s not unlike the early days of Twitter when Pownce was a solid competitor. It didn’t take long for Twitter to hit critical mass, and Pownce didn’t last long after that. But I don’t think we’ll see the same happen (at least not as swiftly) with location check-ins, which means Gowalla, Foursquare, and Facebook Places will probably co-exist for the foreseeable future.
Nice move, Gowalla.