Foursquare and Gowalla. Opinions Live Here...
Hooray for Foursquare (if you like it more than Gowalla, and I don’t)! Yesterday’s announcement of a new Foursquare version for the iPhone just confirms one of the problems I have with the application I consider to be the MySpace of geolocation check in apps, that is they are moving way to fast to grab corporate partnerships and grow their product without paying heed to who uses it and how it is designed. Hopefully Boresquare will get purchased by NewsCorp. and die.
Example. For a brief period on Friday, the new version, v1.6 was available via the App Store. Not surprisingly, the app was released too fast, and it has since been pulled back by the “good” folks at Foursquare. The update was pushed out too early and Foursquare has since pulled the app. On their Twitter feed, the company posted this statement. Whoops...
When the new version resurfaces, what will it feature? A a revamped interface, a brand new user tab, and a new check in history view. Grand...
The UI has been reconfigured from colors, menus and icons, all to make it more appealing to the eye. Further, users profile screens finally have check in history, and access to friends. Amazing...
While MySquare gets their act together, Gowalla has taken their time, made a great application, beginning on the iPhone and now rolled out to Android and soon to Blackberry and Palm. If you haven’t tried Gowalla yet, you should. It is definitely better and more fun. The UI is excellent, the trips feature is grand, the spots rarely have to be created (unlike FourSpare where multiple spots may exist, and were apparently created by people who can’t spell and have an utter disregard for grammar), and much, much more.
Try Gowalla, and if you use either service, feel free to comment in support of, to completely blast, or utterly disregard my opinion. I’m watching fishing right now and have time to give great thought to your opinions...
UPDATE... Triple whoops... THIS is odd...
4 comments:
Hi there -
We actually pulled app since some of the new stuff we're doing for SXSW wasn't ready yet. No worries, everything's all fixed and all should be out in a few.
The other good news is that we are moving quickly with lots of great product development. You'll see lots of changes to the app and the social utility coming soon after SXSW.
Thanks!
- @dens
co-founder, foursquare
Thanks Dens for your feedback. When will the app be up? It is no longer in the iTunes app store.
To clarify, I use both, in addition to many other services, and value your input on my opinion. Best dishes.
Regards,
Me.
It's funny I bumped into your post on FB while preparing to write a post on Foursquare vs Gowalla for TheHeadofLettuce.com (my blog), and I am of the other camp.
Currently I am using both on a Droid, and admittedly I was with Foursquare first, so I have to unlearn there to learn Gowalla, but my first impression is that for how pretty Gowalla looks, and it is pretty, I hate going to check in and not being able to find a location, let alone enter it on my own, like on the Droid app. I also hate that when I go to check in, the app is showing me "Spots" from over 27 Kilometers away.
Sure the draw back is double entry and misspellings, but I believe that will be cleaned up. (as a foursquare superuser, I can edit, delete and merge locations) in the mean time, when I check in, the system only shows me locations in the immediate vicinity, and if the location is not in, after I enter ,add location, it uses the GPS to help with address entry.
I look forward to your view on my article when I get it posted (by the end of the week)
warm personal regards,
Antony Francis
Head of Lettuce Media
Antony:
Thank you for your input. I use the iPhone version for both and have found the opposite. Perhaps it is our OS that results in the changes. I do acknowledge that the new Gowalla UI is nicer on Android phones, but I have yet to use it myself.
Please forward a link to your post to me on Twitter and I will RT and post a counter opinion to mine on Facebook to get feedback from others on their findings.
Best of luck on your piece.
Jeff.
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