Being Cheryl: Social Media Marketing Tips from Columbus, Ohio

There’s been a new wave of buzz lately about location-based social networks. New networks are launching, existing networks are getting new funding. The two most compared services, though, still seems to be Gowalla and Foursquare.

Gowalla and Foursquare are both similar services in that they both have a “game” element to them, unlike location-based networks like Loopt and brightkite. But how they handle that “game” and the basic functionality of the networks is very different. I’ve been using both for a little over a month and find Gowalla far superior, but I’m going to keep using both - for now at least. Here’s why:

Reasons I prefer Gowalla to Foursquare:

• Gowalla is available everywhere. Town population of 156? Yeah, you can check in there. Well, if you can find 3g coverage. Foursquare? Still rolling out in major cities.
• Categories: With Gowalla, every venue is placed in a broad category (nightlife, food, etc.) and then given a specific sub-category (dive bar, dance club.) Foursquare does not allow users to indicate what TYPE of place they are checking into.
• Gowalla allows you to add a detailed description of the spot, too - Foursquare, not so much.
• Graphics: There’s no comparison here. The Gowalla app and web interface themselves are nicer on the eyes, but venues get their own snazzy icon depicting what type of establishment it is. I feed my Gowalla check-ins to Facebook, and having an image that catches attention in a cluttered news feed matters.
• The added element of items. They’re fun - it’s like a geocaching log. You can see where the items been, who’s had it. Is it an essential element for location-based network? No. Is it colorful and amusing? Yup.
• Trips: While there aren’t many of these currently, the idea of a trip is fantastic. Combine venus that have some kind of connection - location, type of business, theme, whatever - and create a cool stamp for people who visit all of them. In the future, they plan to have an easier way for users to create trips. In the meantime, you can e-mail them and ask nicely. I just submitted an Arena District Drinks trip - we’ll see if it shows up!
• I almost always have to refresh the location list on Foursquare. Gowalla has almost always automatically refreshed them.
• I can see where my friends are through the web interface. With foursquare, I have to use the mobile app.
• You can see everyone who’s checked into a particular venue, and how many times. On foursquare you can only see people who checked in “on the grid,” and you have no idea how many times they’ve been there.
• On foursquare, you can only see the last 10 places a person has checked in. With Gowalla, you can see every place they have ever checked in.

Reasons I’ll continue to use both:

• Gowalla doesn’t offer an Android application. The Gowalla mobile website is very good and functions almost identical to the iPhone app, but many Android (and Blackberry, Pre, etc.) users don’t realize they can use the service.
• Possibly for that reason, more of my friends are on Foursquare.
• I like being the “mayor” of a place. Anyone can drop an item and be a “founder” on Gowalla, but you have to earn your mayorships by being the person who has checked into a particular location the most. And to be honest, I don’t really get the “founder” thing at all.
• I love the ability to leave “tips” in a place. Even more, I love that when I check in somewhere, the tips my friends have left for that location or for nearby spots automatically pop up for me.
• I prefer the way Foursquare updates Twitter - with an actual address. Useful for my friends to quickly distinguish between venues with multiple locations (like an Applebees) without having to click the location link.
• While Gowalla’s venue descriptions and categories are, in theory, nice, only the person who created the venue and cool people like me have the power to change them. However, Foursquare’s location tags - which can serve as categorization and description - are editable by everyone.

Which do you prefer - Gowalla or Foursquare? Are you using both? Neither? Let me know in the comments.

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