Location Check-In Gowalla Tries to Set Itself Apart From Pack
There’s a lot of buzz right now about technology that lets you “check in” and share your location, but is location-sharing a new business category? The founders of one of the top start-ups built around the technology don’t think so.
“Location is going to become one of those things that is ubiquitous,” said Josh Williams, the CEO and co-founder of Gowalla, a service that allows users to share their location, pick up and drop virtual items in places and get real-world incentives from businesses they visit. Practical location-sharing developed only recently, with the inclusion of Global Positioning Systems–or GPS–in cellphones. It has driven a lot of innovation, and there has been a surge in companies entering the fray.
Already, microblogging service Twitter has given users the ability to attach information about location to their posts, and Facebook also has indicated that it will roll out such an option. So it seems that location is indeed going to become just another part of social networking.
