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Don’t write off Gowalla just yet: huge Disney Parks deal announced

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By on November 18th, 2010

Foursquare competitor Gowalla has had a tough time gaining users and brands with foursquare and Facebook Places stealing much of the location-based limelight, but today they’ve landed one of the biggest fish there is. They’ve partnered with Disney Parks to offer stamps and pins for users checking in around Walt Disney World and Disneyland.

Gowalla has created hundreds of stamps for attractions all over the parks — from the grim, grinning ghosts of the Haunted Mansion to the colorful Mary Blair designs of It’s a Small World. They’ve also added a series of trips users will be able to complete and earn custom pins, like the Walk in Walt’s Footsteps tour that encourages people to check in at some of Walt Disney’s favorite attractions. The partnership also features a custom Disney Parks page that features recent photos Gowalla users have posted from the parks, a nice tie-in with Disney’s current Let the Memories Begin campaign.

This looks to be a huge win for Gowalla. It’s certain to bring more attention to the service and attract new users among the legions of Disney fans eager to earn the custom stamps and pins.

It’s not clear why Disney went with Gowalla over foursquare for this partnership. Foursquare has almost 10 times the users of Gowalla, so Disney partnering with the smaller player is a big surprise. It seems the trips they’ve added could have been just as easily accomplished with foursquare badges. Was Gowalla able to move faster to create custom work? Were they attracted by Gowalla’s slick design? Or is a foursquare partnership also in the works?

Having recently visited Disney World, I’m not sure how excited I’d be to check in at each attraction I visited in order to earn all the custom stamps. Things move so fast that there’s barely time to pull out your phone, much less check in. I’d be much more likely to make an effort check in at specific places to earn pins or badges, though, if I knew what they were in advance.

As a Disney fan, I’m glad to see they’ve seen the value in location-based services, and as a foursquare fan, I hope they’re open to partnering with more than one service to promote their goals. What do you think of the Disney partnership with Gowalla?

  • http://www.latitudegroup.com/blog Matt

    I think they’ve gone with Gowalla because the design of their pins/stamps fits in with Disney’s a bit more. I imagine that the amount of Foursquare badge “jumpers” may have been a negative point too, they want the badges to go to people actually at the park

  • http://www.allankintz.com ack154

    A huge deal for sure… but Gowalla’s one (or a few probably) big deals compared to how many for Foursquare?

    I’m sure Gowalla is a good enough service and all, but I have absolutely zero interest at this point.

  • http://mikesilverman.com Mike

    I’ve never understood Gowalla’s “game” aspects.

    You check into places, and get random things which don’t have anything to do with the place you checked it (i.e. a koi fish, a football, etc.)

    Foursquare’s badges, while sometimes a bit opaque, at least have something to do with where you check in, and you can do things to earn them, as opposed to the randomness of Gowalla.

    • http://foursquare.com/bauserdotcom Michael Bauser

      I can explain part of that confusion. There are two sources of “items” on Gowalla:

      1) Some locations automatically generate objects, which are related to the location. Coffee items at coffee shops, sports items at stadiums, etc.

      2) Users can “drop” objects they don’t want at any location, to be picked up by the next user that checks in. (Gowalla encourages this, by limiting the number of items a user can hold at one time. I believe a dropped object will override a location default.) That’s where the seemingly random objects are coming from.

      Even Gowalla admits that this game mechanic is “half-baked.” There doesn’t seem to be any purpose to it, other than adding a third thing for users to collect. Honestly, I think one of Gowalla’s problems as a game is that badges, pins, and items are really just variations on the same mechanic, whereas Foursquare has three separate games (badges, mayorships, points) appealing to different kinds of players.

      • http://www.allankintz.com ack154

        Kind of funny… read that and understanding a little more how it works makes me want to use the service even less. :)

  • http://www.therealjamesdean.com Dean T.

    Definitely hope that 4SQ gets this kind of integration. I know it would vindicate all the hours and hours and hours of hard work that Jennifer (an SU3 in Florida I believe) puts in to keep all the parks organized there. She’s awesome and I think the groundwork is already all done for the most part.

    Would love a Disney partnership, but like Matt said, they may be trying to keep it to people who visit the parks and 4SQ can’t do that. Within moments of going live with the deal, all of Indonesia will have every Disney badge there is to have if it’s on Foursquare. :-/

  • Gregorio

    Trust me it’s possible. I go to the theme parks every weekend. Get every ride along the way.

  • http://foursquare.com/bauserdotcom Michael Bauser

    Disney probably went with Gowalla because Foursquare wouldn’t create a badge for every single ride. Sheesh.

    I get the impression lately that Gowalla is defining its target audience differently that Foursquare’s. Whereas Foursquare openly markets itself as a service encouraging people to try new things, Gowalla is encouraging people to get obsessive about topics that are already dear to them.

    Disney fans are an “inch wide, mile deep” constituency. The percentage of adults who would self-identify as “Disney fans” is relatively small, but it’s very devoted. They buy lots of Disney stuff, and make regular visits to Disney parks. Those people could get into this. The “once or twice in my life” visitors, maybe not so much.

    Gowalla has been targeting other “fan” constituencies, too. They’ve gone heavy on sports recently, with collector stamps for every NFL stadium, NBA arena, etc.

    Maybe that will be the hook that allows Gowalla to remain a “solid second place” location-game. While Foursquare works on building a mass market, Gowalla chases the long tail and builds a user base out of fan niche markets. Probably won’t make them as rich as Foursquare, but it might keep them alive.

  • Michael

    ABC v. NBC slant may have something to do with this.

    Foursquare already did deals with the Today Show (NBC) and Bravo (owned by NBC).

    So Disney (which owns ABC) went with their competitor. I wouldn’t be surprised, therefore, if ESPN (owned by ABC) signs with Gowalla.

  • http://www.mouseplanet.com Lani

    This new deal with Gowalla is HUGE. I’ve had both Foursquare and Gowalla loaded on my phone for a while and have been kind waffling on which to go with… this one clinches the deal for me.

    By the way, I realize it’s a small subset of the general population, but there is an extremely popular thriving Disney (cloisonne) pin collection market. I can see those folks going to Gowalla to have a virtual version of their hobby.

    • http://www.allankintz.com ack154

      Do you spend that much time at Disney that this would really be the game changer for you? I mean, it’s cool and all, I just can’t see something like this being enough to push me over the edge if I were considering either one.

      • Lahatiel

        I live in SoCal; it’s been a half-dozen years since I’ve had an annual pass but I know a bunch of people who go to Disneyland a double-digit number of times per year, every year.

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  • Lahatiel

    Funny, having fun with the item-collection aspect of Gowalla is what got me into it and kept me using it in the first place, to the point I still use it alongside Foursquare all the time, every time. Hell, I even finally got Street Team Elite status — Gowalla’s Superuser equivalent — a while back, so I even work to keep both services clean. Haven’t been to Disneyland in a while, either… guess a trip will be in order soon.

  • http://Rogerpenguino.com Roger Penguino

    Considering the history of Foursquare and Gowalla, the mass market versus niche is very appropriate. Dodgeball the precursor to Foursquare was billed as a Twitter with location service of sorts, while Packrat the icon collecting game that preceded Gowalla was very focused on a small but obsessive fan base. Certainly their respective creators still have their original broad philosophy as a guiding factor. That’s not to say their products won’t evolve to respond to competitors and the market, but they will most likely continue to respond from those frames of mind.

  • http://danwboles.com Dan W. Boles

    This is fascinating. I’m not a big Gowalla user. Ever since Foursquare really began to take off at around 500,000 users, I’ve preferred it over Gowalla.

    But what fascinates me most is that I know Dennis C. was in Disney recently. Not sure if he was there simply for the Wine Festival, for play only, or if it was business. That said, I would not be surprised if eventually there were Disney Partner Badges on foursquare.

    Having visited there with my 2 young boys in Mid-October, I checked in at each park, at my resort, and at certain attractions that were my favorites, places that I wanted my friends to KNOW I had visited – but as Chris T mentioned in his post, there is too much going on to check in at EVERY attraction, etc. I wouldn’t be interested in every badge, or getting a badge at every location, etc. I’d just like 2 or 3 badges that take some effort to earn – and enhance my visit rather than interfere with it.

    D

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