the tindog coffeehouse

It’s a social network where you create status entries about things you’re doing and post related photos. You can tag friends, and they can comment on your posts. What is it? If you said Facebook, you’d be right. If you said Gowalla, well, you’d be right there, too.

Last week, I wrote about my knee-jerk reaction to Gowalla’s massive overhaul, deemed Gowalla 4.0. Gone are the game-like incentives such as pins and items, replaced by lists and guides. Instead of checking in to a place, you create a story about it.

I’ve had some time to think about it since then, and it occurred to me that in the process of becoming unlike Foursquare, Gowalla has become a sort of stripped down version of Facebook. Of course, Facebook doesn’t have the travel guides that Gowalla does, but the user activity is much the same. I’m creating a story (status update) about some place I’ve gone, not for virtual rewards but for the sheer socialness of it. Stories are meant to be social objects complete with photos, comments, tagging of friends, and sharing beyond a user’s private profile. Sounds a lot like Facebook, no?

To Gowalla’s credit, maybe that’s exactly the point. After all, this is the year the check-in dies, according to ReadWriteWeb:

In 2011 check-ins are going to go the way of the eight-track tape and disappear. You probably already see this happening. How many of your friends are consistently checking in and broadcasting? How many “I just ousted Fred as the mayor of Starbucks” messages do you see in your stream? Across my network – a large and tech-savvy network – I see less than 1% of people checking in on any service, and the trend is down. Some people are undoubtedly checking in privately, but that has major (negative) implications for how a service can spread. …

All of this doesn’t mean, however, that Gowalla, Foursquare, MyTown, Loopt and all the services with check-ins at their core are necessarily going out of business. It does mean they need to find a way to deliver deep value to people beyond the check-in.

Blogger Adrian Chan points out why this is so:

There is a problem with the implementation of checkins at the level of basic social first principles. Checkins are a non-social and solitary activity, viewed strictly as user actions. Checkins are a “I am here” expression or update but lacking in any clear social context. All social interaction online requires some amount of social context in order for it to generate follow on activity.

The foursquare checkin, having been put in service of badges and achievements (the game-like gamification of social without a game itself to supply good motives and rewards), was a shallow and poor implementation of location-based social interaction. It suffers now from the “Who cares?” and “So what’s next?” problem of situated social context. The checkin is neither a) addressed to anybody in particular (in fact, it’s addressed to nobody in general) and b) solicits no clear follow on activity by having c) no social context.

In other words, the game aspect of Gowalla is fun and provides an incentive to use it, but it’s limited because it’s like playing a game of solitaire. People ultimately get bored and look elsewhere for something deeper. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter offer that. A basic check-in service doesn’t.

If you look at how Foursquare is addressing this problem, their strategy seems to be to integrate more with brands and businesses and offer more deals, either instant deals for checking in or Groupon deals that can be redeemed on a future visit. The focus isn’t on exploration and socialization but on earning a user’s repeat business. The game elements such as badges, points, and mayorships are secondary.

Gowalla, with a much smaller user base than Foursquare’s, never expected to win the check-in war. Instead, they recognized that while people were willing to check in, they were drawn far more to the social aspect of it rather than the deals aspect. The problem with Gowalla 4.0, though, is that there is very little about it that can’t be replicated elsewhere. I can post Facebook updates or tweet wherever I am if I feel like it and can post photos to a variety of different sites, often with a broader social reach. For example, if I want to rave about a new restaurant or share a travel experience, does it make more sense to post it to Facebook where I have 100 friends or Gowalla where I have 20? Of course, you can port your Gowalla stories to Facebook or Twitter or even to Foursquare, but I guess it comes back to incentive. If the social value of my Gowalla stories is primarily only when they’re tweeted or posted to Facebook, then why create them in the first place when I can just go straight to Facebook and post them there?

It’s a Catch-22. Gowalla in its old form, while fun, was never going to be sustainable. Gowalla in its new form, however, becomes just another social network, and a niche one with a limited number of users at that. Don’t get me wrong. I really like the stories concept of the new app, and I think the guides are extremely well done. But without more incentives to use it, I can’t see it being a central part of my day-to-day life as it was in the past.

Previously:
Gowalla: Going out with a thud
Quitter
Google+, 3 weeks later