Gowalla Tops Foursquare at SXSW Web Awards (But Benson Smokes 'em All)
AUSTIN, Texas - Providing further proof that location-sharing services are currently all the rage, Gowalla picked up the award for best site in the Mobile category Sunday at the 13th annual SXSW Web Awards.
Context & Ripple Effects
Gowalla entered SXSW with more than a conference-floor rivalry at stake: it had raised $8.4 million in venture funding and expanded to Android after initially relying on a mobile web app. The festival had already become a visible showdown for location-tagging services, putting Gowalla and Foursquare in direct comparison.
The award gives Gowalla third-party recognition in the same moment that location sharing is becoming a prominent mobile behavior. A separate Foursquare-and-Google Maps mashup also shows that location data was already being treated as a building block for adjacent web services.
First-order effects
- Gowalla gains SXSW's Mobile-category endorsement, strengthening its standing against Foursquare among attendees, prospective users and its venture backers.
- Foursquare loses the event's category distinction despite sharing the same location-sharing spotlight, leaving Gowalla with the clearer conference-week validation.
Second-order effects
- Gowalla and Foursquare face greater pressure to turn event visibility into sustained use, rather than relying on check-in novelty alone.
- As services encourage users to broadcast whereabouts, the privacy concerns already associated with Gowalla and Foursquare become more central to how users evaluate location sharing.
Third-order effects
- Mobile location services are beginning to compete as platforms for services built on place data, not solely as standalone check-in products.
- If conference recognition, funding and mobile-platform availability continue to cluster around a few services, the category's competition will increasingly hinge on user networks and location-data utility.
The trend: Location sharing is moving from an SXSW-era novelty toward a contested mobile layer whose value depends on user participation, data utility and trust.