Written by Tehneyat Waseem
Two location-based iPhone applications were launched earlier this year. Foursquare, recently launched on the Danish market, is an application that allows you to ‘check-in’ and notify your friends where you are and this allows you to earn points/pins, eventually leading you to getting a badge or becoming a ‘mayor’ of a place if you check-in there more compared to your friends. Tried and tested. That’s how I feel about it. However, the good thing about Foursquare is that it’s available on Android-based phones, so it gives you a wider network of friends you can connect with.
Gowalla is really good at listing stuff. What makes Gowalla cool is the fact that its information is crowdsouced, and it’s been around for longer which basically means that the information you get is more varied as it available worldwide.
To be completely honest, Gowalla and Foursquare do a lot of similar things, but also a few different things that separate them and give them their own identity. What I really, really like about Foursquare is that when you check into places you can leave a recommendation (i.e. try their moccha latté) for other people, and also read recommendations from other people about what they had.
Interestingly (ahem ahem) there are ways you can cheat in Foursquare and all I find myself asking is, who, I ask you, WHO would want to spend time cheating in such a game. And and and, does this not only allow people to become more stalkerish?! I’m just saying…try it for yourself.
Me? I’m going to only check into places I really really like, and perhaps read recommendations from other people about what they had (if I’m at a coffee shop) or log into places I think are really cool and worth seeing, and not use it to gain points for every random place I randomly go to. Gowalla….go walla yourself!
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