Yesterday Mashable posted this biased claim about Foursquare winning the geolocation war. While the infographics are very cool looking, I think many people are being blinded by the "media darling" status of Foursquare. Take a look at the infographic, specifically at the pie chart measuring sentiment where you can see Gowalla has 53% positive mentions as opposed to Foursquare's 38%. This statistic is the most compelling because it backs up my claim that the capabilities of Gowalla's platform are by far better than Foursquare's.
For either of these players to win the geolocation game, they'll need to get big brands on board. And for big brands to get on board, these games need ways to provide useful and valuable rewards to their consumers. Foursquares mayor status and badges pale in comparison to Gowalla's features. Gowalla wins by providing more value to both of it's customers: brands and consumers. Here's why:
Yes, Foursquare rolled out business pages yesterday, but that doesn't mean anything until they can figure out a way to get more locations to offer specials for being the mayor, or unlocking a certain badge. The thrill of the game gets old after a while, and consumers need real and valuable rewards in order to keep interest in checking in to places.
So my money is on Gowalla to win in the end. What do you think?
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