Tag Archives: gowalla

Don’t be a free user? I’m not so sure.

December 8th, 2011

Pinboard founder Maciej Ceglowski suggests demanding to pay for services that you like that might be free. In fear that free services that are popular are not sustainable. It is a great post. But it raises some questions from me.

How would paying for a service ensure it won’t sell out? Maciej suggests that free services are more likely to shut down “Because it’s hard to resist a big payday when you are rapidly heading into debt.” No doubt that is true but when is a big payday easy to resist? If I had been paying Gowalla a few bucks a month would they have turned Facebook down? I don’t know. But if they still decided to sell the company (or, more accurately liquidate the product and move the team) to Facebook I would have been both disappointed and out a few bucks.

In other words, paying for a service doesn’t ensure its longevity or that it will never change.

What about Twitter? I saw many people linking to Maciej’s post as being good advice and some even had shown how they added the ability to pay for their free services based on this thinking. However, no one has mentioned that all of us are using and advocating a free service that fits Maciej’s scheme just perfectly — Twitter is a rapidly growing free service.

Yes, Twitter shows us ads from time-to-time in the form of Promoted tweets, trends, and accounts. But unless you use the Twitter.com site you’ll rarely see these ads. And, I’m sure, they’re making money behind-the-scenes by giving businesses access to their “firehose” and more controls and analytics than traditional accounts get. But it is still free for the public to use.

What would happen if, say, tomorrow Twitter decided that all Twitter clients (third-party and official) had to show some fairly obtrusive ads or you’d need to pay a few dollars per month to use the service? I’d wager many would pay up. Many would leave. And their growth would slow. However, none of that would ensure that Twitter wouldn’t sell out to a company sometime in the future. Revenue makes Twitter look even more appealing to potential buyers than if they weren’t making money. Revenue, it could be said, makes a company even more likely to sell.

This leads to Maciej’s next suggestion. Build it yourself. Obviously not everyone can do that (or should do that). But that seems to be the best suggestion he made in his post. The only way to ensure a service will be around and not change is to build and maintain it yourself. But, what if it becomes popular and someone with deep pockets makes you an offer? Then where are you? Back at the beginning.

Facebook buys Gowalla

December 3rd, 2011

The news is spreading that Facebook has acquired Gowalla. Many of the reports are focusing on the team being acq-hired to help with the Timeline or perhaps with Facebook’s mobile apps. But I think these angles are missing something – the fact that Gowalla’s experience could really enhance Facebook’s stickiness.

Here is something I wrote just after to the latest version of Gowalla went public.

“A check in is a very “thin” experience. There isn’t much to a check in besides; I’m here and so are these people. Everything else on these services revolves around the check in. Gowalla is trying to do something different and enhance that experience to make it more enjoyable and perhaps fun. That’s great. However, I think this is where Gowalla might lose me. I use Foursquare to check in because it is very quick to do so. I switched from Gowalla to Foursquare for this exact reason. And now with “stories” Gowalla seems to be trying to slow this process down even more. So they must be going after a very specific individual that wants to share their experiences with people in certain places, and who are willing to take the time to do that, rather than simply sharing their current location. I’m OK with this but it may not be for me. We’ll see.”

The part of Gowalla that made me switch could actually be the part of Facebook that keeps its users on the pages even longer than they are now.

I may have to let this sit a little longer. But I assume this will be good for the Gowalla and I’m happy they’ve seen something for their hard work.

The new Gowalla

September 27th, 2011

I haven’t used the new Gowalla enough to have formulated a strong opinion but I thought I’d jot down my initial thoughts. Here are some bits from their blog post announcing the new Gowalla.

Here is the bit I really like:

“The cornerstone for this update is Gowalla’s new Social Guides. We’ve taken the best of what’s local, the places your friends love, and the recommendations from experts, rolled them all up, and have created the foundation for a collection of Social Guides to cities, parks and regions around the world — ready and at your fingertips with Gowalla.”

I love the idea of traveling to somewhere I’ve never been and being able to easily find places to visit that people – especially my friends/family – have recommended via Gowalla. I look forward to trying this out and seeing how well it works.

Here is the bit I’m not so sure I like:

“We’ve broadened our concept of “checking in” as well. We call them stories now. It’s easy to add friends to a story so you can add photos and comments together as a single experience. Eventually we’ll even bubble up the best stories within our guides, so you can relive all that was great about that film festival you’re going to.”

A check in is a very “thin” experience. There isn’t much to a check in besides; I’m here and so are these people. Everything else on these services revolves around the check in. Gowalla is trying to do something different and enhance that experience to make it more enjoyable and perhaps fun. That’s great. However, I think this is where Gowalla might lose me. I use Foursquare to check in because it is very quick to do so. I switched from Gowalla to Foursquare for this exact reason. And now with “stories” Gowalla seems to be trying to slow this process down even more. So they must be going after a very specific individual that wants to share their experiences with people in certain places, and who are willing to take the time to do that, rather than simply sharing their current location. I’m OK with this but it may not be for me. We’ll see.

I’m happy to see Gowalla going in an entirely different direction then Foursquare. I hope they find their niche and it works for them and for their community. I think we’re still only seeing the tip of the iceberg of the value of these location based services and what they will offer the world still remains to be seen. I look forward to watching it all unfold.

Check-in services need to get much faster and more valuable.

July 13th, 2011

Foursquare is currently winning in the check-in services space but I believe it is still anybody’s game because there is still a lot of work to do.

Even though I “know” people that work at Gowalla and their sense of design is practically unparalleled in the check-in service space – Foursquare simply works better and that is why I use Foursquare instead of Gowalla.

“I’ll be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve used Gowalla (a location-based checkin service you use on your phone). I’ve found that in most of the cities I visit Foursquare has more users, more tips, is faster, easier to check in, etc.” – Robert Scoble

This has been my experience as well. Check-in services need to be very, very fast and valuable in order for the mass market to use them. Typically check-in services aren’t social streams (that you check many times per day) they are utility apps to help you track locations that you visit, the current location of your friends, and – most of all – information about where you are from other people that have been there. When this entire process isn’t very easy and very fast it becomes a hassle to use the services and so I quickly give up on using them.

Foursquare, while far from perfect, is simply lightyears faster than Gowalla currently is. Checking into a location is quick and easy. For the most part, everywhere that I’d like to check-in is already in Foursquare. On Gowalla I had to add nearly every location I visited. This task is tedious on Gowalla. Here is one gripe, as an example: When you search for a location using Gowalla’s iPhone application and it isn’t in their database (which happened for 85% of my check-ins even in places like Atlantic City, NJ) – you can’t tap an “Add location” button. You have to back out of the location search screen and go back into another screen to find the “Add location” button. This became so annoying that I downloaded the Foursquare application and haven’t looked back since.

I have had high hopes for check-in services ever since my days using Brightkite (man I miss those days). Foursquare has legs (and $50M in the bank). I hope these services continue to improve but they’ll need to innovate very, very quick in order for the mass market to adopt them longterm.