Daily Bits

gowalla

It’s Gowalla Vs. FourSquare, Which Side are You On?

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Undoubtedly, location-based or location aware services, be it on the web or mobile is the next big thing to watch out for. And if you haven’t jumped into the bandwagon, you might want to check out Gowalla or FourSquare, two of the hottest location-based social networking tool which are fighting it over the right to become the market’s number 1 service.

And these two services just might officially spark up their unavoidable rivalry at the upcoming SXSWi 2010 gig next week. Both FourSquare and Gowalla are said to be bringing more innovative features in the said event.

So, which side are you on? Are you using Gowalla or FourSquare? Have you checked what new features each of them are preparing to unveil?

I actually have both, and several of them. I have FourSquare on my iPhone and BlackBerry Bold while Gowalla both sits on my iPhone and Google Nexus One phone. But I don’t get to use them that much since there are very few people in my area who uses these applications.

In terms of features, Gowalla recently revamped its Passport pages by using Big icons to show places you’ve visited. It is also now easier to spot if you’ve got new friend requests. Design-wise, Gowalla has also made some improvements, specifically eliminating the prevalent dark green hues of its interface and replacing it with a light green look. Overall, Gowalla is ahead of its competitor, FourSquare in the looks department.

If FourSquare is lacking on the looks department, it is however prepping up some functionality enhancement. One of these is the “categories” element to plaes. This new feature simply lets you put places you’ve visited into various categories to make browsing easier.

Of course, these two location-aware services would only thrive if you are using them. So, which side are you taking? Have you used either of the two on your mobile devices?

Gowalla Adds Trips and Bookmarking Features to its Fun and Useful App

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Location-aware social recommendation sites are so hot today. Recently, I wrote something about AT&T’s plan to release its Buzz service, possibly to go up against Yelp, Foursquare and Gowalla. Yelp and Foursquare has been getting their share of publicity lately, and now here comes Gowalla with some nifty additions to its already interesting services.

If you haven’t used Gowalla either on your iPhone or on the web, the concept is pretty simple. You create an account, add Trips, Gowalla’s term for identifying places you’ve visited including your opinions about those places and share them with other Gowalla users. Whereas before, trips were curated by the Gowalla team, now you can create your own Trips, describe these Trips and add up to 20 spots that you have visited before and then published it for your friends to see via the Gowalla app that they are using.

To make adding Trips more fun, Gowalla will also start featuring unique and exciting trips. These trips will be promoted on the merits of their quality and relevancy and the number of people who completed the trip. Custom pins or badges, which are the stuff that make Gowalla more fun will be given to Gowalla members who have completed trips published trips by other members.

In addition, you can now create bookmarks of spot pages at Gowalla.com. You can then view your bookmarks from your iPhone. This will also be available to other mobile devices soon.

Alright, I know you’d appreciate these features if you’ve used Gowalla, either from the web or on your iPhone. If you haven’t tried it out, now may be the best time to do so. You might find it cool.