MG Siegler reporting on the upcoming Gowalla app that is being announced today at TechCrunch Disrupt and will soon be shipping:
The main middle tab is now “Guides”. Here you’ll find curated travel guides for various places around the world. For example, if you load up the app in San Francisco, you’ll see the San Francisco guide, as well as the East Bay guide and the Stanford guide. You can quickly scroll through other guides not near you as well. And Gowalla has the ability to make special guides on the fly. For example, they made a TC Disrupt guide for event-goers.
Clicking on these guides loads up a bit of information about the city as well as all of the must-see spots. Again, because Gowalla has years worth of location data, they’re able to easily populate robust guides. Some of the locations are curated, some are based on check-in data and people favoriting places. The Gowalla “Highlights” feature also plays a role here.
This is a fantastic move for Gowalla. I have always fancied the app and its service, but I never could sustain using it every day when I was out to lunch, out to coffee, out shopping, out on a date, etcetera. This change in focus towards “traveling and storytelling” sounds like just the right move.