Pelago knows that just about every location-based app in the world is seeking coverage right now just prior to SXSW where they will all battle Highlander-style. So they approached me with a pretty smart pitch: curing the “social rut.” What they mean by that is these days, despite the prevalence of social networks, people are actually less social than ever because they’re being roped into playing games like Farmville and Mafia Wars for hours on end. Sitting in their rooms. Alone.
While that may be a part of social networking (a rather large, hugely profitably part), it’s not really social. That’s why location-based networks excite me: they have the potential to bridge social networking with actual social activity. And that’s exactly how Pelago is positioning the latest version of its location-based app, Whrrl 3.
Regular readers will know my love for all things location. In particular, these check-in location-based services fascinate me, mainly because I see them as a bridge between social networks as we’ve known it, and actual social interaction in the real world. Foursquare has been my app of choice over the past year (it launched almost exactly a year ago at SXSW). But the latest version of Gowalla has me thinking about switching sides. At the very least, I’ll be using both at all times now.
Gowalla version 2.0 for the iPhone just hit the App Store today. With it, you’ll notice a few different things. First and foremost, the overall look has been updated from a sort of Army green, to a more subtle light green that is much easier on the eyes. More significantly, the toolbar has been reworked so that now social activity is front and center when you load the app, while your own activity is the last tab. Both of these changes are things I’ve complained about since day one with Gowalla, so they’re certainly welcome. But that’s not why I’m excited for the app. I’m excited because it takes the idea of the check-in and extends it.
Yesterday brought news that Facebook is planning to launch its location offering at its f8 conference in the end of April. In first reporting the news, the New York Times noted that “the company was not trying to beat the smaller location-based social networks, such as Loopt, Foursquare and Gowalla.” From what we’re hearing, that’s true — because they could be using some of those services to federate check-ins.
How do we know? Because it appears that a Facebook employee has been showing the app around to friends. One person who has seen it notes that the icon for the location feature has a pushpin on a map. This was apparently a beta version of an app, but the functionality, if Facebook chooses to go with it, would likely be built into the massively popular Facebook iPhone app.
With SXSW starting Friday in Austin, Texas, every location-based service out there is right now finalizing updates that they hope will be the one that gets them used more than all the others. Loopt, is betting on events integration.
The latest version of the app, due to hit the App Store tomorrow will feature a new Pulse tab. Here you’ll find events populated from a ton of sources including the live music tracker SonicLiving (SXSW is first and foremost a music event, after all) and most notably, Facebook. This pre-population is important, because it means the events will already be in the system so users won’t have to do anything other than share it with friends, or check-in if they’re going. The feature also uses you current location to show which events are happening around you at any given moment that a lot of people are at.
Since its launch almost exactly a year ago, Foursquare’s website has largely had the same basic design. Tonight, it looks like that’s finally getting updated.
While it looks like the update is still in the process of rolling out to all the pages, Foursquare.com now clearly has new system-wide toolbars, a brand new sign-up page, as well as some new settings. You might also notice a new, name-only logo.
While it’s been clear for a while that Foursquare has been working on a site redesign, only in the past few days have signs started to show that it was coming. For example, a completely revamped History area showed up a few days ago, one allowing for venues to have categories as well as show which friends you checked-in with at places.
Tomorrow it will be exactly one month since the launch of Google Buzz. The song remains the same: it’s a mess. Normally, that wouldn’t bother me so much — after all, a lot of services are a mess — but Buzz has a lot of potential. But again, it’s been a month. I’m starting to wonder if it will ever reach that potential. I’m also starting to wonder if it shouldn’t have been introduced as something entirely different.
Despite its many annoyances, I’ve been using Buzz regularly over the past month (Gmail integration tends to shove it in your face and I hate unread counts). The one thing I keep coming back to is that Buzz on the iPhone and Android is pretty impressive. Specifically, the location functionality as run through the mobile web is impressive. In fact, that’s what I think Buzz should have started out as.
The idea was a way to show people the best food in Japan beyond sushi — to literally show them, in picture form. Then the thought morphed into writing to a book, where the best food in the world was shown. But that’s a lot of travel for one person. So the thought became, why not crowdsource it? That’s Foodspotting.
Foodspotting is an application that allows you to take picture of a food, say what it is, and pin it (with geolocation) to the restaurant where you got it. You may wonder who would use such an app — but just think for a second about how many of your friends on Twitter tweet out pictures of food. People have been doing this long before Foodspotting, this app just gives them more of an incentive to do so, and let’s them organize it.
It’s also one hell of a new food discovery tool. And that’s exactly why the team behind it, Alexa Andrzejewski and Ted Grubb, hustled to get the official iPhone app done in time for the SXSW festival, which starts next week in Austin, Texas. With it, you’ll be able to use the “Guides” to easily find (and contribute to) the best foods in Austin. The Foodspotting team put together a few of these guides (including a scavenger hunt, and a street food one), but other users have already created others as well.
Last year at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, both Foursquare and Gowalla had their public unveilings. This year, with each rapidly gaining adopters (and mainstream interest), the two will likely battle it out for geolocation supremacy, along with a range of other competitors. And both Foursquare and Gowalla have already begun position themselves for the big battle.
Gowalla Pretties Up
A few days ago, Gowalla rolled out a completely redesigned website. Notably, the new main page features an easy-to-understand explanation of what the service is (check in, share with friends, enjoy rewards), as well as large icons to show users where to download the app on various mobile devices. It also features a “Live on Gowalla” continually updating stream of check-ins. And it has an area for “Featured spots.”
We’re two weeks away from the SXSW Interactive, a drinking festival with a side of tech that takes place each year in Austin, Texas (before the larger SXSW film and music portions). While the conference itself is interesting, more interesting is usually the “next big thing” that comes out of it. And I think I already know what it will be this year.
Three years ago, Twitter famously was the talk of the conference (it won the web award that year). While sure, it didn’t explode into mainstream popularity until sometime later, the writing was on the wall for the early-adopters who started using it there or shortly thereafter. Two years ago, it was arguably Twitter again that was the must-use service throughout the conference as it continued to mature. But last year saw some new entries rise. Both Foursquare and Gowalla launched at the conference, with Foursquare gaining much of the momentum coming out of the conference (as some of us predicted). And this year, I suspect it will be largely an extension of that, with location services in general being the talk of the show.
Facebook has been doing background checks, known as due diligence, on the location-based social network Loopt, a source with knowledge of the talks tells us. Generally speaking, due diligence of this kind is only performed when a company is in acquisition or fundraising talks.
Loopt won’t comment on this story, and a Facebook spokesperson says “As a practical matter, we don’t comment on rumor and speculation.”
There is no indication that Facebook has made an actual offer to buy Loopt at this time, and in fact we don’t even have direct information that negotiations are taking place. But it’s clear that Facebook is at least considering acquiring Loopt, and/or others in this space.
It’s also not clear that Facebook is the only company taking a look at Loopt. Google is also highly interested in the mobile social and location space. Their recent launch of Buzz, which allows check-ins of locations via a mobile device, is just one indication of that.