My Thoughts on Gowalla
The amazing Gowallaby!
So it appears that Gowalla’s days may be numbered if their acquisition by Facebook means what I think it means.
This is definitely the most I’ve ever been involved with a startup that has undergone such a transformation since its beginning. I got into Gowalla because of my friend Mat, who was visiting one night in April 2009 and mentioned about a certain new iPhone app.
A the time, Foursquare was still completely unknown to me and much of the world as both services had only launched about a month prior at SXSW.
After installing it and taking my first trip around town, I soon discovered that I was one of very, VERY few people using the app yet. Strangely, though, in my smallish town, one lone spot already existed. That spot was Culbert’s Bakery by James W who had visited town not too long before.
Traveling to places like London, ON Kitchener, ON and Stratford, ON was pretty much virgin territory save for a few spots here and there. There were so few spots in fact, that the company sent me free t-shirt just for creating 10 spots. They soon made me part their Street Team which meant I could edit any spot in the world if the name, pin placement or description was a bit off. I used this mainly to keep my hometown of Goderich neat and tidy as spots would sometimes show up that needed some adjustment.
The first version of the app had its share of quirks and bugs. First, when checking in, your required distance from the pin was extremely unforgiving. I remember when I made the spot at Fincher’s the GPS was a bit off (another issue it had) and the ended up 50 feet or so away from where I had intended it. I had to carefully maneuver around until it accepted my placement. Another bug it had (which was great for those of us who loved items) was the ability to re-checkin to a spot over and over until your item pack had been filled. It only took a few minutes. They squashed that bug before too long.
One day my wife and I were in Stratford. I had created a few spots here previously and upon checking into my first spot while there I noticed someone else had checked in! This was a pretty big deal because there still weren’t a lot of people using the service, and even less so as you got away from the larger cities. As we made our way around Straford and I was checking into a few more places (admittedly a few checkins were for places I hadn’t been to – I was trying for sweet items!) I noticed this same person popping up as he had visited all of the spots I had created plus he had created lots of his own. I sent him a friend request.
That user’s name is Blake, and since then, he has become a great friend. We realized quickly that we also both shared a love of roller coasters and collaborated to ‘tidy up’ many amusement parks on Gowalla. Since Blake wasn’t a Street Team member (he later became one) he would often supply me with correct spot names, descriptions and pin placements. It was great team work that we both enjoyed doing and I’m sure many users benefited (without even realizing) from our clean up efforts. Blake and I still keep in close contact and have both recently begun using Path 2.0 (interesting stuff there).
The next person that comes to mind when I think of Gowalla is Ben D. Ben started Gowalla Tools (later rebranded to Wallabee) and was obviously very passionate about creating great products. I cannot even imagine how many times I referred to his map when searching for spots close by to clean up. I vividly remember a few ups and downs relating to Ben and Gowalla. The first big ‘up’ was when he announced he was working a travel edition of Gowalla that would save on data (great for traveling out of country) as well as a gorgeous-looking, data-intensive app. Exciting stuff! Then, I remember the day he made another big announcement. Unfortunately, the announcement turned out to be that he was putting his app development on an indefinite hiatus due to Gowalla’s frustrating API. Another big ‘up’ was when ‘White Guinea Pig‘ appeared on Twitter. Things were rolling again! I’m leaving out tremendous amounts of detail, but suffice it to say, Ben was a huge reason that I loved Gowalla as much as I did. He also did a HUGE amount of promotion for Gowalla through his work — and for no other reason than his love for the product, because the Company certainly didn’t reward his efforts in any way. Ben wrote a very thoughtful post on his blog reminiscing about his experiences. It’s a great read!
A few more notable people that I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know through Gowalla are Anil, Eric and Bobby. Anil takes god-like Instagram pics (he’s aneel on there, by the way) and Eric and Bobby are Disney aficionados in Florida and California respectively. I look forward to keeping up with everyone on other location based services and on Twitter. Thanks, guys!
It’s with much melancholy when I think of Gowalla now. For me, the service just felt soulless since that September 2011 day when v4 launched. The backlash from users to the change in direction was incredible, but more important than that, they simply started delivering a terrible experience. The iOS app was filled with bugs, crashes, and lagged badly. The website was turned into something frustrating and all but useless. I could tell things were in trouble for them when my activity feed reduced to just three people (+ a few Gowalla employees) updating with any kind of regularity.
I haven’t decided if or when I’ll delete my Gowalla account, but from this point forward, I’ll try to focus on the amazing 2+ years I had with the pre-v4 Gowalla. It was a hell of a ride.
Thanks to everyone who made it that way!
