Co-Founder of Gowalla, CEO Josh Williams is attending the annual SXSW music, technology and arts festival in Austin, Texas this year to do what he’s already doing: launch a location-based social networking app. is. Some have the same name and core concept as the original. Gowalla debuted in his 2009 in Austin (where he was headquartered at the time), and today, with a new look and feel and some radical differences, it hits the public again in Austin, but people still is true to its core beliefs. A way to connect locally and directly with the help of technology.
I told Williams about the intricate terrain on the map that he followed to get here. The ensuing hype-filled location-based app war in which Foursquare served as a major rival (now Dennis Crowley is one of his Gowalla investors). His acquisition by Facebook in 2011. The app was closed after just one year. And replay in the middle of a global pandemic.
First, what is Gowara? For some this is part of a refresher, but for quite a few people it is probably learning about it for the first time. You can “in” to share your location with trusted contacts and see where others on your friends list have checked in. and other locations (including branded spots such as Chipotle) are shown on the map, and you can also add your own locations. You can also add comments to your friend’s check-ins and have conversations within the app. There’s a new mechanic for swiping through recent friend check-ins and a gaming element with a collection of activity-related stamps. It’s simple, yet engaging, and distinctly different from anything currently offered by mobile social competitors.
The name of the app and its guiding principles may not have changed, but the landscape has certainly changed, and Williams says it gives Gowalla a more lasting chance of success than it did in the beginning. Part of the reason the first attempt didn’t take hold, he says, is the perceived competition between Gowalla and Foursquare over who is effectively the next Facebook or the next Twitter ( Both seemed successful at the time). Some of the decisions Williams says weren’t right for location-based networking in the long run.
“Rightly or wrongly, the press and everyone else is saying that one of these companies will be the next Facebook or the next Twitter.”The next big thing will be a zero-sum game. Well, that becomes this competition, how do we get the most users and how do we advertise against them? or do whatever. We could talk about it a lot, but for various reasons it’s a bad idea and it doesn’t work.”
Instead, Williams believes the key to a sustainable future for apps like Gowalla lies in the users who love them the most. There is precedent, he says, citing perhaps the biggest in the form of an established global phenomenon.
“I don’t know how many millions of traditional Pokemon card players there are, but there are effectively two markets: deck builders, people who actually know the game exists here, and those who are trying to do so.” I build their decks and know all the rules,” he said. “And then I have a son who just wants to collect Pikachu and Charizard and doesn’t care about anything else at all. Pokemon has done a great job of catering to his two different audiences, a hardcore group and a casual group. He did.”
Williams said the model doesn’t work just for card-based games. He also cites Fortnite as having effectively done the same, the Gas app founded by Nikita Bier, which he acquired by Discord earlier this year, and his social network, which has been successful outside the US, especially in Asia. pointed out the product.
Image credit: gowara app
Gowalla already operates a prototype version of this approach. Its “Street Teams” feature offers additional features and early beta access for users who pay a small recurring membership fee. One of the things that has changed for him, according to Williams, is that the size of his mobile user base has grown significantly. This means that even if a user only wants to pay a small percentage of their total base, they can potentially build something that can be successfully monetized this way. Zenly, the location-based networking app that Snap acquired and shut down, is a good example of an app that had this kind of scale in the same space Gowalla is targeting, he added.
Zenly’s rapid growth and subsequent death by its acquirer bodes well for initiatives like Williams and Gowalla. Zenly’s demise wasn’t a statement of potential per se, but rather of his needs and priorities for Snap in the face of an uncertain economic environment at the time.
As to why location-based social networks have more potential now than ever, Williams said that devices with location services enabled and users accustomed to opting in to them are very popular. I’m citing that it’s been around a lot. He also points to the rare success of his Apple, an unlikely player when it comes to social networking software.
“I think things have changed a lot in the last decade, obviously with Find my Friends showing up,” says Williams. “Apple has done a lot of footwork to make it feel like an ad-hoc social network in itself.”
Gowalla has an impressive list of notable investors this time around, including GV’s MG Siegler (in fact, very early on at TechCrunch, when he was writing here, Gowalla covered in its original form). I spoke to Siegler about why he’s optimistic that the timing for the resurgence of location-based networking is right. All his experiences lead him to the conclusion that everything in technology goes back to normal, and the question of whether a startup succeeds comes down to timing.
“I believe for a lot of startups, if they have a long enough timeframe, they can be in the right place at the right time for something to work,” he said.
Gowalla didn’t have both the right time and place to begin with, but given signals like Zenly’s aforementioned success, Williams and his team are ready to capitalize on this resurgence. said.
“More than ever, it feels like the right place at the right time,” says Siegler. “Obviously, more phones are in people’s hands, networks are getting better, and these phones are far more powerful than they were in the original location war days. And we can support such operations. A business model that seems to be
Combined with the clear demand demonstrated by Zenly’s success, Siegler sees hope for the future of Gowalla, which could implement subscription services, digital goods, or a combination of these various approaches.
Another key timing factor Williams cited as a driving force was the pandemic. He rebuilt his company in October 2020 and said the global crisis helped inform his decision to restart on many fronts. First, he said, “People will have the seed to go out and experience the world once.” And operationally, he said, “the stigma of running a distributed team has been removed.” This was a boon, as there were certain individuals I wanted to work with from my Gowara experience, but these people were now scattered around the world. Instagram design pioneer and former Gowara alum Tim Van Damme.
Williams also believes the timing is right given the general trend of social media. While Facebook is losing its presence and TikTok has the upper hand, he believes such an approach would be responsive in terms of user demand. Similarly, Williams believes generative AI will mean new value in connecting with real people.
“In some ways, the way social media has evolved has certainly made it interesting to build more private, or not necessarily private, but smaller, more intimate, more authentic kinds of networks. did,” he said. “Another thing we have an early glimpse of is what happens with chatGPT and other AI approaches, where content created by AI and spewed onto other social media canvases I think we’ll see it all, so there’s a premium to knowing who’s real and what’s real, it’s a product that’s innovating these connections that’s more based in the real world I think it will be an opportunity for us to say, ‘Hey, these are my true friends.
