
Gowalla Is Reborn As A Beautiful App For Travel And Storytelling - kacy
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/12/gowalla-reborn/
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kariatx
Seeing that they probably would have never beat Foursquare, I'm glad that they
are continuing to iterate. I have to say that I'm a bit skeptical about this
new product. It seems a bit murky conceptually, and I'm not sure if travel is
the right industry for them to be putting their bets on.

I met a lot of diehard Gowalla fans during SXSW at their party, and they
seemed much more keyed into the gaming / object collection aspects of the
service. Bottom line - I think a lot of these superfans (many of whom traveled
on their own dime to the party) will probably feel alienated by this new app.
Gowalla will probably have to find a whole new market, which may not be the
worst thing but won't be the easiest either.

No matter what, I think Gowalla has a huge uphill battle to climb. They
haven't even really been able to build much excitement here in Austin (even
among people I know who are addicted to social media). I think their design
and UI is top notch, but they seem to be missing whatever makes consumers
super excited.

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patrickryan
I worked at Gowalla last summer and I can tell you that there are superusers
who travel around only for the beautiful stamps and to collect items, but that
number is very small. Gowalla has always been about travel and exploring. This
move is not a surprise in any way.

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newobj
Sorry, has check-in been "won" by Foursquare now that Gowalla and Facebook
have bowed out, or is it actually the case that check-in is just _dead_?

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chime
Check-in has gone dormant for now because for most of the world's mobile
users, there is no real benefit to checking-in to a place. The action of
checking-in can be quite powerful if different systems can react to it. I'd
love to check in to a fast-food drive-thru on my phone, get a meal menu
customized to the particular location, place my order, pay for it, and just
drive up to the window. Or check-in to a stadium/theater/museum and get a
customized program guide. I don't want to download a new app for each company,
location, or event. I don't want to go to their website. I should check-in to
a place using a single app, and the relevant services should perform the most
appropriate actions. It's not going to happen right away but eventually it
will.

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alttab
If you want to "check in" to a drive-thru, how is this different than say,
going to chipotle.com and ordering online? Your description sounds like "an
app that conglomerates all things I would do on a company website into one."
Obviously what those "things" are are different from person to person - there
would need to be more focus. Plus you'd have to integrate into every system
you partnered with - which is significant development overhead for each new
feature.

It kind of sounds like you are suggesting that each company/store/whatever
conform to some generalized platform, whose APIs can be auto-discovered or
auto-pruned with GPS coordinate input. This is almost along the lines of
"everything should have an API - even my toaster." Theres someone out there
trying that very thing but I forgot the name of it.

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thinkbohemian
We've put a lot of hard work into this, I think you'll be happy with the final
result :)

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bennesvig
Nice work!

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troymc
I think MG is right that "The travel aspect is potentially even bigger. While
there are a lot of people going after this problem, no one has nailed the
mobile travel guide so far. When someone does, it’s going to be massive."

Partnering with Disney, National Geographic, and various universities to get
their guide-content is a smart move.

Who is providing _good_ travel guides for mobile? Fodor's? Frommer's? Lonely
Planet?

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joeguilmette
Lonely Planet is still my go-to for travel guides. Their content, however, is
not yet crowd sourced...

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andrewcooke
surprised to not see more positive comments here. this sounds like color done
right (or better, at least).

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nhangen
It takes time to get it right, and I think Gowalla and Foursquare are both on
track to do just that. I also think Josh is a great product guy and will
eventually find a working solution. I think this is great proof that they
aren't just waiting for it to come to them by chance.

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wyclif
They were pretty much forced to pivot because they could not compete with
Foursquare.

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Hisoka
Why are they given a chance to speak at Techcrunch Disrupt? Come'n they had
their moment in the sun, give some new startups a chance

~~~
mootothemax
_Why are they given a chance to speak at Techcrunch Disrupt? Come'n they had
their moment in the sun, give some new startups a chance_

What, because startups should be given one chance and one chance only?

