Vancouver Internet Marketing Social Media Marketing Consultant Canada

Gowalla 3.0: All-In-One Check Ins Are Here

By Allie Townsend on December 2, 2010

Yes, you can now check in to your Foursquare account with your Gowalla App.

Will I stop opening both my Foursquare AND Gowalla Apps on my iPhone now when I want to check in somewhere and just use Gowalla's nicer-looking new interface instead? Or will I be lured back to Foursquare? Or will I simply gravitate towards only using my Facebook app and just check in there where I have a larger base of relationships? Maybe once Facebook Deals arrive in Canada and if Facebook can give me the option of also checking in to Foursquare and Gowalla then I'll let Facebook have a chance at being my one geo location app that rules them all. Until then I'll continue to open the Gowalla app and be tempted to try to remember what my foursquare email/password is so I can skip opening Foursquare all together.

As a social media marketer I love to see competition growing amongst the social networks and to see an increasing number of people learning about location based games and checkins and deals. What's your favorite location based application? Have you claimed your business in Foursquare and Facebook? Need help figuring out how to use social media marketing to promote yourself or your business? Contact me today for a free 30 minute phone consultation at http://stirsolutions.com/consultation

Geomium offers four main sections and information can be viewed on a map or as a feed: People (all friends near your current location), Places (all the nearby bars and restaurants), Events (all nearby plays, festivals, concerts and parties, which can be filtered by type and date) and Deals (all the local deal, discounts and offers from nearby bars and restaurants).

So, for example, you might spot that their is an event in your locality that your friends are already at or attending. Afterward you want to find somewhere to eat/drink and see that there is a special offer at one particular establishment. That’s the idea anyway.

Geomium is a new location based social network application launching in UK now, then Europe, then USA later. Canada? Maybe to follow.

Does it feel too late to be coming on the scene with another "check in" application? Almost. Pretty hard to follow Facebook Places given their huge userbase. The unique Yelp, Qype, Eventful dataset and the People, Events and Deals integration features of Geomium had better be amazing and extremely easy to use if it's to expect to carve out any market share before its competitors such as Facebook Places, Foursquare and Gowalla copy geomium's unique features. It's a (decreasingly) big world, so maybe there's a little piece of the pie left to grab in Europe? More competition is a good thing.

How can anyone commit to one location-based platform during these wild-west days of social network geolocation shootouts on main street. There goes a tumblr tumbleweed going rolling by. Is your iPhone/Android smartphone's main screen filled at least getting full of all of the different location-based apps like mine? Just wait til your boss gets a whitelabel location based app for your company (E.G DoubleDutch), and then the local grocery store gets one, then the local mall. Soon with location-based apps auto-sensing where you're at (if you let them) there won't be a place too small or too remote that you can't check in to.

Location-based services, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, are proving quite popular with consumers open to sharing their locations with the world. They’re also built to be inherently business-friendly, as most allow retailers to incentivize checkins and social sharing behaviors in the hopes of attracting swarms of patrons to their businesses.

As the space continues to evolve, new platforms, technologies and services are emerging with the specific intention of helping small businesses reward their loyal patrons with deals for their in-store behaviors.

Summary of location-based social media marketing services available for businesses looking to take advantage of mobile location-based marketing, checkins, barcode scanning & group buying:

1. Verified Checkin Rewards - SCVNGR 

2. Social Barcodes - Bakodo.com iPhone app can scan most barcodes. Stickybits.com and Shopkick.com integrate social experience w/ barcode scanning

3. Group Deals - Groupon.com LivingSocial.com , OpenTable, Yelp.com , Zagat.com all offer group deal services to businesses. GroupTabs.com
combines group buying with checkins.

4. Challenge-Based Rewards - SCVNGR, Foursquare, Gowalla offer challenge based rewards allowing businesses to decide what rewards to offer and reward criteria.

5. OPt-in Deals - Bizzy.com is a go-between for businesses and local consumers -- it allows businesses to upload deals and consumers to create a list of businesses they want to hear from.

Social-networking giant Facebook has entered the check-in world.

Facebook executives on Wednesday announced the launch of Facebook Places, which -- similar to services such as Foursquare and Gowalla -- will allow people to use the GPS on their mobile phones to let friends know exactly where they are.

Facebook Places is available immediately in the United States through the latest version of Facebook's iPhone app and, for other advanced mobile phones, through the company's site for advanced mobile devices, executives announced at Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto, California.

I wonder if the next generation of fridges will have a touch screen on the outside of the door that allow you to "Like" (a la Facebook) products presently existing in your kitchen (aided by rfid in each product package). Perhaps I could quickly rate or review any product as well either via webcam in the screen, just audio, or by typing a quick message on the touchscreen - and perhaps I'd be motivated to provide feedback by the companies that make the products by earning points for each review which can be redeemed for other products. Actually, there'll probabaly be an iPhone app that comes out sometime soon that, using a new rfid reader, would allow you to rate any product in your entire home -- perhaps Yelp will strive to carve out more market share and leave the Foursquare-Gowalla-Facebook-Twitter crowd in the dust by integrating this kind of product "check in / review" feature. Where does stickybits fit into all of this? Maybe that concept will simply be replaced by my iphone's camera being able to take a picture of any product and then recognize it (as we are already seeing happen with book covers, CD covers etc. Why not recognize every human as well and check in to them and rate them? Maybe being Mayor or Duke of a location (or person? new meaning to "I own you") won't be as easy as checking in every time you walk or drive by your favorite coffee shop. Perhaps it will (or should) also be be based on one's social score. You gotta be liked by others who have also checked into a location in order to rank high in that place. SERPS are for websites that rank high. What would my
my human media HRP or HERP SRP or SHERP (Human Ranking Position or Human Engine Ranking Position or Social Ranking Position or Social Human Ranking Position) be Starbucks in this scenario? Give me a dollar off my Frappucino, baristaman, everyone here likes them and me and thinks I deserve one.

FourWhere helps you to find comments, tips for venues left by Foursquare, Gowalla and Yelp users. FourWhere automatically retrieves and aggregates user comments and visualizes them on the map. To use FourWhere, provide your location, and then click on the map to see venues (locations) or tips (comments written about a particular place).

FourWhere is public service so there's no need to register or sign in. All you need is your web browser. Go ahead, start discovering the world around you.

FourWhere is built by Sysomos using the public data from Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and the Google Maps API.

Got your basic all in one geo location gizmo we've all longed for. Foursquare, Yelp & Gowalla

Foursquare, the smartphone app that gives you points and badges for "checking in" at clubs and convenience stores, is about to reach the one-million-user mark. That's a big deal. But it's also a reminder that, try as we might to cover its every move, most of you haven't tried Foursquare yet. (Or you're using its scrappy archrival, Gowalla.) Here's what to expect when you do:

It doesn't take long to get to stage five on Foursquare or Gowalla without an active network of friends using the same social application. Even then, with just getting virtual stamps, mayorships and virtual goodies it might get boring quick. What's next to keep people checking in? Find real money or songs or tv shows or movies or movie tickets or coupons instead of virtual goods? Become the real mayor of a town for a day after 250 check ins at city hall? Move to Rally Up http://www.getupandrally.com to cut down on the stalking and frequent home break-ins when you broadcast to the world you're out of town?

A new geolocation app for the iPhone was released today called Rally Up. What differentiates Rally Up from the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla is that it has a strong focus on privacy and content sharing. Rally Up bills itself as “a social network for real friends,” letting users share messages and photos with the people they trust.

To this end, Rally Up takes a very different approach to friends lists and friends management from other social applications. For instance, Rally Up doesn’t integrate with Twitter (). What?! I hear you gasp. As the saying goes, “It’s not a flaw, it’s a feature.”

“What’s next in social media?” It’s among the most popular questions out there. But while most folks currently answer with “location-based services” (i.e. Foursquare (), Gowalla ()) or “group purchasing” (i.e. Groupon, Twongo, Living Social), the real battle may be between Facebook () and Google ().

The fight between these two Internet giants to become your default social profile has been brewing for a long time, and the prize is an enormous potential revenue stream. Let’s take a closer look.

Location-based social networking just got itself a tidy little mash-up. Checkin Mania uses Gowalla, Foursquare, Brightkite, and Yelp and displays all the places that the networks' users have been checkin' out. There are diddy little icons to mark the maps, and you can click on the users' names as well as the places to find out what they think.