Gowalla

Share your location and find new places

Gowalla is locked in a battle with FourSquare in the location app wars, offering a similar but subtly different service. Find your friends, share the places you’ve been to, and discover new ones with this social app.

In essence, Gowalla uses your GPS location to show where you are, and what’s near you. The spots around you are all created by the Gowalla community, and you can also add new spots yourself. So if you visit somewhere interesting, you can share in on Gowalla. Then any Gowalla user will be able to see the place you marked, and visit there too.

You can leave virtual items in your spots for other users to collect when they check in at your spot too! When you visit a spot that’s registered at Gowalla, you check in, collect a gift, and can post your location and any comments on Facebook and Twitter.

This community tool allows you to see what and who is around. More and more places with reviews and photos are added every day as the community grows. This makes Gowalla great if you’re traveling, or need to coordinate a group of people in a city (as long as they all have iPhones!).

Gowalla’s biggest advantage over Foursquare is its interface. It’s much more friendly and fun than the conservative-looking Foursquare app, and the interface is easier to navigate. This version is much improved with a smoother design and better usability.

Gowalla is still evolving, and is certainly a fun thing to use when traveling, but it’s too early to say how useful it’ll be.

Bug fixes