This graphic is about the ‘buzz‘ created by the geolocation companies Foursquare and Gowalla at 2010’s South By Southwest. I was lucky enough to attend this great event and saw first hand the marketing techniques they used.
A founder of Foursquare was out on the sidewalk playing actual foursquare with anyone. This is genius. Not only was twitter mouthing off this fact, but inside the convention center, everyone was talking about it. Gowalla is an Austin based company, so for Foursquare to come in and dominate on Gowalla’s home turf like that was a little embarrassing.
I personally use Gowalla, I don’t update too much for a few reasons:
1: I have no friends 🙁
2: I don’t go anywhere!
I’d still love to be ya friend if you Walla — I’m Tim Willingham. I have picked up recently on my check-ins. Trying to make it a habit! If you have tried Gowalla in the past, but wasn’t a fan – a recent update has made it 100X better.
SXSW is creeping up on us, have you seen the line up!?! I hope I get to meet some of y’all, but I’ll be interning at South By and most likely won’t have time to see ya. The other founder will be milling around the convention center and I’m sure he’d be up for a conversation.
I know come March 11th, there will be even more location-based app presence at next year’s SXSW. Now that Gowalla lets you update your Foursquare, Facebook Places and Twitter with 1 check in, hopefully location-based mobile can take off. It is still gonna be a tough time to grab market share. I’m rooting for the hometown team. [Via]