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"In the four months since SXSW - the battlefield for the &amp;quot;location wars&amp;quot; - Foursquare has \u00A0passed the 2 million user mark while Gowalla is somewhere in the neighborhood of 340,000, and the\u00A0gap continues to widen.\r\n\r\nPart of Foursquare\u2019s success has been partnering with Bravo TV, the History Channel, and the Huffington Post \u2013 along with many others. \u00A0Gowalla counts the National Geographic, USA Today and LIVESTRONG among its partners. Also, Gowalla is available in a larger format for the iPad, takes advantage of the iPhone\u2019s Retina Display, and is available for Android and webOS too.\r\n\r\nThat level of distribution means that they have the same potential user base as Foursquare. However all of this doesn't seem to be helping Gowalla grow, which is its number one concern.\r\n\r\nThat said, Gowalla has also done a better job at working special offers into their application. \u00A0While Foursquare has had the vague \u201Cspecial offers nearby\u201D interaction until recently, Gowalla has partnered with Apple, Eye-Fi and the New Jersey Nets to give away iPods, Eye-Fi memory cards, and tickets with a VIP experience for those users who checked in and found an item.\u00A0 Check in to a location, pick up an item and win a tangible prize; \u00A0it doesn\u2019t get much simpler that than.\u00A0 Yet Foursquare still has built up a mammoth lead.\r\n\r\nOne area where Gowalla could quickly improve is location verification.\u00A0 Or more precisely, solve its zealous over verification.\u00A0 Gowalla is a stickler for check-ins at the proper physical location.\u00A0 More than a few blocks away and Gowalla won\u2019t allow it.\r\n\r\nWhile Foursquare has largely embraced \u201Ccheating\u201D to some extent, looking at users habits and frequent locations to determine legitimacy, Gowalla has frowned on this behavior.\u00A0 While both applications can run on Wi-Fi devices like the iPod Touch, only Foursquare lets people on Wi-Fi participate as equals.\u00A0 To get the most out of Gowalla you need a mobile Internet connection or constant access to Wi-Fi.\r\n\r\nBecause of its\u00A0dependence\u00A0on game mechanics to spur use, without a number of different places to visit, Gowalla can become uninteresting quickly.\u00A0 Foursquare users benefit from visiting a location often enough because they can become the Mayor.\u00A0 Obviously Foursquare doesn\u2019t want people to check in all over town from one place and claim all the nearby Mayorships, but Gowalla should be encouraging people to check in, drop and find new items, and play the game more than they are now.\r\n\r\nAlthough it's still early and all of the players in the location war haven't fully revealed themselves yet, Gowalla needs to quickly pick up more users, or it could find itself as simply a niche service where users collect digital souvenirs, despite having a competitve product that brings a higher level of fun to the monotonous task of checking in."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/us/2010/07/12/the-widening-gap-can-gowalla-catch-foursquare/>