Location based social networks are becoming extremely popular with two clear leaders, Gowalla and FourSquare.
My personal choice is Gowalla, why? Because Gowalla requires you to actually be in the location you are checking in to. With FourSquare you can check in to any location, either the other side of the world if you choose. The idea behind FourSqaure is simple, check in the most times to a location and become a the 'Mayor'. Should someone else check in more times, you loose your mayor-ship. Gowalla on the other hand requires you to check in to locations and collect stamps, pins and badges. Stamps are simply awared when you check in to a location. Pins are awarded for completing certain tasks. For example; checking in to 25 coffee shops. Randomly you will be awarded with badges to collect or swap with other badges. Currently there are 138 to collect. Some badges are specialised to a current event or location. This gives Gowalla the edge over FourSquare as you have additional reasons to go out and explore. The main reason behind both of these apps. Both of these applications allow you to upload your location details to FaceBook and Twitter, though this isn't something I do as it can swamp your feeds.Currently FourSqaure is leading in the number of users and checkin's but I expect this to change when people start to get bored of the continued cheating that happens at FourSquare. Look at this guy for example. Recently Gowalla started to allow users to upload photos along side checkin's. My main issue with this is you have to take the photo at the time you upload, you can not use a photo in your library or upload at a later date, for example; when you are back home. Fingers crossed this will change. You can use Gowalla on the iPhone, iPad, Andriod and Blackberry devices.Why not have a look at Gowalla? And add me as a friend if you like. I'd be interested to know what are you currently using and why? Leave a comment below.
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