Nowadays everybody tweets, instagrams and checks in to FourSquare or Gowalla and there’s not a lot of blogging going on. That’s a bit of a shame because I like reading real, long form content. Most tweets are so mundane I wonder why the “authors” even posted them. Thanks to Twitter’s easy follow/unfollow mechanism you can filter out the stupid tweeters; but not the stupid tweets. Say there’s a person who posts interesting content but also feels the need to check in IN HIS OWN HOUSE on FourSquare everyday. Apart from being ultra-handy for thieves and robbers — who can then just check Twitter to see if Person X’s house is available to be robbed — it’s downright annoying. What’s the value of this “location based tweet”?
If I arrive at a conference I could potentially check in to FourSquare to find out who else I know is there (or I could just take a look around…). Gowalla is doing some interesting things with travel paths (see: this article) where the app remembers that you checked in at SFO and NY airport six hours apart, thus meaning that you are travelling. The website lays out a visual plan of where you were. Kind of like what iPhoto does when you import a lot of GPS-tagged photos: afterwards you can generate a map of your walk around a city. One can only conclude that Gowalla doesn’t know what their value is yet, but they’re in a good position with lots of venture capital, so why not experiment?
Gowalla promotes itself with “check in at place X and reap the rewards”. I, for one, haven’t seen any real life Gowalla or FourSquare based promotion so far. I’ve read a few articles where the major of a certain place would receive a discount on his drinks but that’s all. The idea is good: you come at some place a lot, you receive discounts.
However, this idea already exists in many forms. There’s the customer card where you receive a discount after having spent X amount of cash at the store/shop/café, or after paying 10 times. There’s the social act which is getting to know the patron so he gives you a little extra coffee every time you come. I don’t get how checking in to Gowalla ten times would overrule any of these. However we twist and turn the story there will never be a situation where EVERYONE chooses to use location-based apps because not everyone feels the need to a) buy an iPhone or other smartphone b) share their whereabouts with the world all the time c) Go on their smartphone when they could just be enjoying their coffee in the sun.
I mean, don’t we have to handle computers enough already doing our jobs? You and I might not think so but the majority of people might do. However, anyone can keep a customer card in their pocket and anyone can just get to know the shopkeeper/patron/owner of the business. So how are FourSquare and Gowalla going to overrule these customs? They’re not going to.
To conclude, I don’t know what the value of FourSquare and Gowalla is. All I know is that the “just checked in at XXX” tweets are annoying; that I don’t want the whole internet to know where I am; and that VCs are looking for new darlings but not finding anything. (Quora, anyone?)
(If you want to comment, please do so in English. Thanks!)
