“A location service only gets interesting when you get to a certain scale,” and Foursquare isn’t there yet says Josh Williams. His check-in app Gowalla wasn’t either, but it was bought by Facebook where a quarter-billion people tag locations each month. In an interview, Williams tells me how the Nearby feature he launched on Facebook today shows you that data “through the lens of what’s around you… → Read More
What the headline says, basically, according to two sources. That and multiple sources are telling me that a majority of Gowalla investors were cool with the deal being entirely in Facebook shares, because those are likely to be more profitable moving forward — as Facebook approaches IPO.
Other sources are saying that the “Investors vs. Founders” sentiment isn’t a reflection of the majority of… → Read More
Facebook has acquired location-based startup Gowalla, according to a report this evening by Laurie Segall on CNN Money. The terms of the deal haven’t been reported, and Gowalla declined to comment. Facebook says it doesn’t comment on rumor and speculation. Update: We’ve heard from an independent source that Facebook is indeed acquiring Gowalla.
According to CNN’s report, the Gowalla team will… → Read More
A couple weeks ago during TechCrunch Disrupt, Gowalla co-founder and CEO Josh Williams took the stage to preview the latest version of his service. And while it is technically called Gowalla 4.0, as Williams showed, it’s really a total revamp away from the check-in space and towards the travel and location-based story space. But as good as Williams and myself may have been at describing it, you… → Read More
The location wars had a number of casualties. Some companies shut down, some sold off their remaining tech and talent. Others are still out there plugging away, but at this point, it seems clear that Foursquare won the all-important battle over the check-in. Even Facebook is slowly backing away from that particular space. Now the fun can really begin.
For a number of months, Gowalla was seen as… → Read More
It was almost exactly one year ago that Facebook launched Places, their location-based offering. Reading the press at the time, you would have thought it was going to be the Foursquare-killer, the Gowalla-strangler, the Loopt-beheader, etc. Nevermind that Facebook partnered with all of them for the launch — those guys were done.
Fast forward to today: Foursquare recently raised a large round… → Read More
Back in the day, the knock on the Foursquare iPhone app used to be that it wasn’t very visually appealing. That was especially true in comparison to rival Gowalla. But much has changed over the past several months. And now that Foursquare has big funding and a larger team to deal with the pains of fast growth, they’ve been putting a lot of emphasis into how things look and feel. And it’s paying… → Read More
Google Realtime Search is nothing new. For months it has existed as its own area within the search engine’s navigation to search for things happening in realtime. But up until now, that has meant mainly Twitter (thanks to Google’s data deal with that company). But earlier today, it appears Google flipped the switch to make Realtime Search a lot more useful. Namely, they’ve added results from… → Read More
Adding existing features like third-party check-in and better photo support, the Austin based company updates the Android version of their location software today. Gowalla co-founder and CEO Josh Williams told me in a quick phone call that he feels like “we’ve created a better experience for our Android app than we even have for the iPhone version.” Strategically, supporting the best Gowalla… → Read More
We’re now just over two weeks away from this year’s SXSW event in Austin, Texas. And just as is the case every year, there will be several startups jockeying to be the one that is the breakout hit. But one of those previous breakout hits, Foursquare, isn’t standing still either.
In a ridiculously awesome blog post on the matter today, Foursquare hints at their plan for the event this year. Here’s… → Read More
A few weeks ago, we noted that with a few subtle changes being made to their service, it seemed as if Gowalla was starting to connect the dots on travel. That is to say, it seems like they’re starting to use all the of location information they have in ways beyond simply sharing where your friends are at any given time. Some changes being made today further connect those dots.
Gowalla has just… → Read More
It was almost exactly two years ago that Google launched Latitude, their location-based service. Two years may not seem like a long time, but it’s “the equivalent of a decade in location services,” Latitude PM Ken Norton jokes. Most importantly, it was just before Foursquare launched to the world at SXSW in 2009. That changed the entire game, literally, as Google CEO Eric Schmidt likes to say. → Read More
Now that Facebook has entered the space, Google appears to be ready to take it more seriously, and Foursquare is gaining some real traction, the other players in the location field need to start defining their roles. Of the other players, Gowalla has been doing some interesting stuff around check-in aggregation. But their more interesting play may be around travel. And a small change today points… → Read More
Yesterday morning, Foursquare pushed out a big update to their iPhone app that included the ability to add pictures to check-ins for the first time. This functionality matches the one that rival Gowalla has had for some time now — 9 months, actually. And today, Gowalla hit a milestone with pictures: 1 million. But signs point to Foursquare closing in on that number quickly. Very… → Read More
Earlier this month, location-based service Gowalla went on the offensive against rival Foursquare — by linking up with them. Yes, they created a way for you to use Gowalla to check-in on Foursquare (and Facebook). Why would they do that? Because they said that users told them they felt the Gowalla experience was better, but many of their friends were already using Foursquare. So what did that… → Read More
Editor’s note: As the Web goes mobile, every Web company needs to build mobile products. Author Elad Gil, director of Geo at Twitter, has a lot of experience in that area. Way before selling his company Mixer Labs to Twitter last year, he kickstarted Google’s mobile efforts back in 2004, when Google’s mobile team “consisted of 1/4 of an engineer dedicated to maintaining an old WAP search server… → Read More
There is no reason in the world I should have been invited to a dinner with Foursquare founder and CEO Dennis Crowley. It’s already one of the most written about companies on TechCrunch, and I am the only TechCrunch reporter who has never written a post on them.
That’s in part because I am one of the only TechCrunch reporters who has just never been a big Foursquare fan. I get it, but a mayor… → Read More
Much has already been written about how Loopt was perhaps a bit too early to the location game for their own good. But that doesn’t mean they’re not out there still trying new things to keep their over 4 million users and entice new ones to join. The latest such effort is Loopt 4.0, their latest mobile app.
The first thing you’ll notice about Loopt 4.0 is that it has been entirely redesigned. → Read More
This past March, I came home from SXSW with a problem. The so-called “location war” hadn’t yielded one check-in service to rule them all. In fact, several new ones popped up just at that conference alone. Check-in fatigue set in.
Since then, the problem has only gotten worse. Now Facebook has launched itself right smack dab in the middle of the location space with Places. And others like Yelp are… → Read More
The geolocation wars are well underway. If you need any proof of that, simply look at this thread in Quora. A startup posted a question wondering which place database they should use for their new check-in app. The responses? Foursquare: Us. Gowalla: Us. SimpleGeo: Us. Factual: Us. Locationary: Us.
Each of these companies, along with a few other big ones not practicing the art of self-promotion… → Read More
To me, one of the most interesting thing about Foursquare is the History tab. It transforms the service from a “where you are” app, into a “where you were” log. In a way, it’s sort of like a diary. I wish Twitter was better at this idea as well. Because what I tweeted a year ago says something about how I was feeling, or what I was doing back then. In fact, a lot of the web services we use on a… → Read More
Location based social network Gowalla has struck a pretty significant partnership today—Disney. The startup is teaming up with Disney Parks to create a branded, Gowalla-powered destination for park-goers to explore Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resorts.
People are able to view park happenings with custom Gowalla Disney Passport pages for Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts that include… → Read More
It’s a bad month to be Foursquare or Gowalla. Ten days ago, 900-pound gorilla Facebook announced Facebook Deals for Facebook Places (i,e., location-based coupons) and check-ins for third-party apps. A day later, Pew Research reported that, despite all the hype, the use of location-based services is actually declining in America, from 5% of the online population in May to 4% last month. Forget the… → Read More
It’s no secret that both Foursquare and Gowalla are expanding their location-based social networks past the check-in, developing other incentives for consumers to use the services. Gowalla, in particular, has focused on adding innovative features to its platform to make the social network more interactive, through photos and comments. Most recently, the startup added local highlights, which allows… → Read More
Today, Foursquare has announced the arrival of version 2.0 of their service. This version has been the subject of much speculation for several weeks, as everyone wants to know how Foursquare is going to keep their momentum alive. With Facebook Places now out in the wild, and slowly rolling out around the world, Foursquare is well aware they need to move beyond simply being a check-in service. So… → Read More
If you didn’t think the check-in was a commodity before Facebook launched their Places feature, you likely do now. But Gowalla has known that for awhile, and that’s why they’ve been moving to extend the service and build on top of the check-in. Comments and photos came several months ago. Today brings another nice addition: Highlights.
The best way to think about the feature may be to think back… → Read More
Leading up to Facebook’s location announcement, there were two schools of thought. Either you thought Facebook Places was going to destroy Foursquare. Or you thought that this new service would help the startup by bringing more awareness to the location field. It appears that the latter is happening.
“Just heard from The @HarryH that today was @foursquare’s biggest day ever in terms of new user… → Read More
Today at an event in Palo Alto, CA, Facebook unveiled its new Places product — essentially their check-in utility. Obviously, there has been a lot of talk about what this means for the current players like Foursquare and Gowalla. Well, Facebook is partnering with both of those guys. We hinted at this possibility a couple days ago.
Representatives from both Gowalla and Foursquare were invited to… → Read More
For those placing bets on which startup Google will buy next in its impressive social shopping spree (Jambool, Slide, etc.), you might want to lower your wager on Gowalla, at least for now. According to founder, CEO Josh Williams, Google has yet to initiate takeover talks with the the location based service— although, he says reading the market speculation “made me smile just a little… → Read More
Earlier today, location-based service Gowalla formally unveiled their new Check-In API. This is big news because it means third-party apps can write to Gowalla’s API for the first time. Looking over the documentation for this API reveals some interesting things. Notably, there are six “commandments” that Gowalla says developers should follow.
Behold, Gowalla’s 6 API Commandments: → Read More
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