Gowalla to jettison virtual items
Between Gowalla and foursquare, the latter has always been the more appealing service to me. It appeals to my explorer side that likes to go out and try new things much more than Gowalla does. I’ve always had a soft spot for Gowalla, though, because it appeals to that collector part of my nature. The beautiful stamps and virtual items are fun to collect as I check in at different places.
With the next update to Gowalla, though, virtual items will be no more. As they move forward and evolve the service, they’ve decided to drop them from future versions of the app. In a blog post, they say that fewer than one half of one percent of their active users were actually using them.
Virtual items, to put it nicely, were confusing. It wasn’t until I’d been using the service for about 6 months that I really began to understand what they were for and why they appeared randomly. From that point forward, though, they became the reason I checked in on Gowalla. The chance that I could find something I didn’t already have in my pack was too much to pass up. If I did already have it, I might be able to trade it for something I didn’t have that had been left at one of the venues where I checked in.
Virtual items failed not because they were confusing but because Gowalla never took the time or effort to explain to users what they did or how to use them. If it took me six months of frequent checkins, imagine how long it would take someone less devoted to checking in.
Partnerships with brands could’ve turned virtual items into something special. Gowalla, it seems, never worked to create the partnerships that could’ve made them a success. These exclusive items should have been redeemable for exclusive perks, but that never really happened. As a result, only a handful of branded virtual items are available, mostly from NASA and the Disney Parks.
Without knowing what’s up Gowalla’s sleeves for the future of their product, it seems they’ve lost the last big advantage — in my eyes, at least — they had over foursquare. I’ll check in again with Gowlla when I visit Disney World next month to earn the special stamps for attractions, but it won’t have the same meaning without the chance of collecting my Mickey Ears or a Grim Grinning Ghost. Those virtual items may have been confusing, but once you figured them out, man, they were fun to collect.
I totally agree with you. I never really used Gowalla but I loved those items.
I’ve been using http://cr.osspo.st/ for a while now to push my 4sq check-ins to Gowalla just so a could see what type of items I could get. Looks like there will be no reason left for me to use Gowalla.
I’m so sad. :/ Items meant a lot to me. Depending on where and when I got an item. Trading items with friends and getting excited.
[...] items, to put it nicely, were confusing,” writes Chris Thompson at sector-watching blog AboutFoursquare. “It wasn’t until I’d been using the service for about 6 months that I really [...]
[...] start-ups might come along with even better ideas on how to use games and virtual items, something others have argued that Gowalla didn’t manage well enough. And gamification can still work as a motivational force for all kinds of behavior, though [...]
To bad this will most likley stop me from beeing a dual user… Items is what kept me as both Foursquare and Gowalla user.
I collected items as well, in fact, I have about 150 low number items that I looked high and mighty for… pretty sad to see this go as this was the one redeeming feature of Gowalla.
Even when I understood what they were, I never cared about virtual items. I’ve said it before: Gowalla has a game design problem. Collecting pins and stamps and virtual items is too many variations of the same game mechanic. Only the truly virtual-reward-obsessed are going to devote brain power to tracking three similar types of virtual reward.
(All of those people seem to be posting irate comments on Gowalla’s blog today. Most of them are making the classic obsessive’s mistake of only talking about how they use Gowalla, and begin completely oblivious to how other users do.)
Anyway, Chris, I think you might have overlooked a more intriguing sentence in Gowalla’s blog post: “Pins will remain a part of Gowalla, but much of the fat surrounding them will be trimmed.” One should wonder what they mean my “fat.” Maybe they’re planning to step back from their complicated “trips” and go for a simpler foursquare-like model for earning badges?
I assume that’s what it will be. Like everything else on Gowalla, the trips are complicated beasts. I don’t think I’ve completed a single one since I joined.
You’re right, they had way too many things going on. I can honestly tell you though that the stamps idea was definitely a response to badges. However, that made things a bit cumbersome, getting stamps and items. Once trips were introduced, it was way too much going on, way too many things to check and accomplish. I don’t think anyone I know who played Gowalla really cared much for the stamps / trips.
I will admit one thing, I believe it when Josh says only a very tiny fraction of people collect items. I see the same people in the history of each location. I understand that, but these people are also the biggest fans. It’s too bad that instead of somehow incorporating the items, they have discarded them and in the same process discarded those most passionate about Gowalla.
Sad to see these go, and I also agree that a) they were adorable, and b) they didn’t really live up to their potential. However…
If you love the idea of little independent pieces that can move around the real world, you might be interested in checking out Hitchery, which takes this idea to a whole different level…
Players can create characters (hitchers) that can hang out in locations or get picked up and moved around by other players (your phone is your “bus”). When you are carrying passengers on your bus, you can take pictures with them that get saved in their “scrapbook” as a record of their travels… there’s more too of course.
We’re just in the midst of playtesting around the Boston area right now, and hope to have our first version out in the next few months. You guys are our the folks we want to delight, so if anyone’s into joining the beta, we’d love your feedback!
bummer! I have a bunch of moon rocks in my pack and archived from when I went to Kennedy Space Center to see STS-133 in November and February. Gonna have to screenshot that or something – or wait for them to figure out a system for us to do that.
As for the Trips, I have parts of, oh, I think one Disney one partially completed but I still haven’t finished one. Fun though.
Only real reason I was checking into Gowalla. Goodbye it seems.
Are you kidding me? I don’t know many people who use Gowalla but the few who do only do so because of the items. It seems that they are removing the only thing they have going for them. It will surely be the death of Gowalla.
Collecting items has been huge to me and my friends. It has almost been like a competition to see who can find the rarest ones or even the oldest ones. I also love seeing the travels that some items have made. Being dropped by one person and picked up by another. Than that person dropping it somewhere new. I have one item that traveled across the U.S. Without the items feature, I don’t really see any reason to continue using Gowalla.
With social networks becoming more localized, for my Masters Thesis at NYU, I am focusing on location-based services (LBS). The study aims to understand how the three key factors — practical functions, fun & games, privacy risk — affect the adoption of location-based services applications. Please do a good deed. Complete a short survey (6-8 minutes) (https://www.113.vovici.net/se.ashx?s=13B2588B58E0782D). It is completely anonymous. Please email me if you like a copy of this study. Thank you!
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Hey everyone, please sign this petition with your twitter account to ask gowalla not no to remove items!
http://act.ly/476
Thks!
So long Gowalla, it was a fun 2 years….but since items are gone I am deleting you.
I echo the above. Will miss my curated collection of items from my travels. I know where I want to go. New Gowalla is not what I need. Goodbye Gowalla.
The change has seen the demise of Gowalla even faster than I anticipated. Prior to the change, my few friends racked up a few dozen checkins a day. Since the change, there have been only six as far as I can tell, with none in the last 24 hours.
I echo everyone on here… and honestly, I’m a little annoyed that they did this with little announcement (except their blog, and who reads that?) I worked HARD for those items, and I don’t even get a chance to keep them? It would have been a nice reward for loyal/longtime users. I feel really betrayed right now… I guess it’s back to Foursquare for me.
Yes, they certainly kept it quiet. I first became aware of it several days after the blog entry when I stumbled upon it in a Google search result.