Back in January I was at a crossroads with Foursquare. I know I’ve mentioned this to people here and there, but the lack of cultivation was really getting on my nerves. It seemed that there were no moderators over there. For example, there’s a Walmart 2 minutes from my house. I go there frequently due to the convenience, and get my prescriptions there. So checking in often, I was mayor. After some time using Foursquare, and I guess with wider adoption of the service on this side of the Bay Area, I noticed it was harder to find the “right” Walmart in Foursquare as there were eventually 5 different check-in locations for the same physical Walmart.
From everything I could tell at the time, there was nowhere within the service to flag duplicate locations. Being slightly OCD, this bugged me to no end. I’d complain, attempt to contact them, no response.
Well, of course this is mostly a useless game with some potential for local businesses to market to me by offering coupons when I check in or something. So I couldn’t get too irritated.
At my wits end with Foursquare, I used it while in Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit West and then said sayonara. I used Facebook Places for awhile, then after learning that Gowalla would kill two birds with one stone and integrate with Facebook, I jumped on it.
I quite like Gowalla now and have been using it since January. There’s no mayorships, but you can “find” amusing little items at different locations. Like I’ve received Cowboy Boots at two different steakhouses. Gowalla has better graphics and I really dig it’s Android app better than the newest versions of Foursquare. From what I can tell, their service is growing as well and has frequent updates. Every time it updates, I like the functionality of the app better. One of my favorite features of Gowalla is that some businesses have made their little icons graphics of their locations or logos. It helps me find the right place. Best of all, there’s very very FEW duplicates!
One of the greatest features of Gowalla is that you have to actually be in a geographic proximity to the location in order to check in. So you don’t have a bunch of people jokingly checking into your house from thousands of miles away. Gowalla has excellent GPS technology. Most of the time once I enter a business and start the app, it suggests where you want to check in and knows exactly where I am, despite having checked in nearby elsewhere. For example… I went into my doctor’s office last week, opened the app, and it suggested the office right off the bat – despite having not been there since February.
Lately I’ve received a few invites to Scoville, which is currently in private beta. The idea behind Scoville is that it collects local recommendations based on your check ins. I liken it to Yelp Lists, where you can collect your check ins into recommendations. The theory, I suppose, is that not all the places you check into you’d necessarily want to recommend and evangelize. I signed up and I’m interested in participating, but there’s a problem – it integrates with Foursquare.
So what to do? I certainly don’t want to check in to both Gowalla AND Foursquare everywhere I go. I updated my Foursquare app so I can check in and test out Scoville, but I’m still at a crossroads. Are there business uses for Scoville? I hope to find out & report back! What are your thoughts on the geolocation check in services?
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