Foursquare what? Gowalla who?

Slowly sweeping across the country is a new social media phenomena, geo-location reporting.  As huge companies, like Facebook and Google, try to hone in on your location it is actually the two new players on the scene that are making waves. Foursquare and Gowalla have found their own niche within this growing market.
So what is a Foursquare and who is Gowalla? Foursquare and Gowalla are virtually the same in how they are executed, but the experience is different. As you travel the world you use your GPS  enabled smartphone to check into locations. You can tell all your friends on the site, on Facebook and on Twitter.  This allows people to find you out in the world.

Let’s look at Foursquare first.
Foursquare basically has three competitive games to play.

First, and the easiest to understand, who ever checks in most often at one location becomes mayor. Why be mayor? Some locations provide special deals to mayors, so the more mayorships you have the better your chances are of getting some deals or freebies from locations. Second, is the weekly point count. Built into Foursquare is a way for you to accumulate points for checking in to more locations than your friends. The more times you check in the more points you get. The more locations you create the more points you get.  Get more points in a week and you win…bragging rights. Third and final game is the collection of badges. There are all kinds of badges: Newbie, location counts, late nights, overshare, 4sq day, local and many more. Maybe you will even be able to get coveted Swarm Badge like these lucky people from SXSW.

Gowalla takes a different approach

For Gowalla users, you have Trips you can complete, user set up locations to visit to tour some special area of a city. As you travel you will find all kinds of items, like airplane peanuts, bats, tabletop arcade, apres ski and even a teddy bear. In Gowalla, you don’t become mayor, but you can become a founder or Top 10. Also, the passport and stamps(locations visited) are a big deal in Gowalla.  You can accumulate State stamps, as well as location stamps.

My Take
Foursquare has more users and a fun interactive way to compete with friends for location dominance.  Gowalla makes me feel good, great graphics, lots of little hidden items and it looks fun.

So how do you get started?
You are going to need a few things. First off, you are going to need a GPS enabled smartphone, (Iphone, Android, Blackberry, Palm) with an Internet Connection. You will need to visit the app store for your phone and install either one, or both, of the Apps. Now you can set up your accounts from your phone, but I would suggest, setting up your username online through the websites first.

So if you are following my advise, and lets assume you are, you need to log and set up your account at either:
http://www.foursquare.com
http://www.gowalla.com

Link you accounts to Facebook, Twitter or both. You don’t need to add your locations to each check-in so don’t worry about that for now.  Be sure to upload an picture, it will make your account look like you are serious and not just looking into the service and will help you make friends.

Next, find friends, either through your email accounts or your connections through Facebook or Twitter.

Now head out into the world with your GPS on and go to your favorite coffee shop, book store or movie theater and check in!

A few tips for newbies:

Hope to see you all checking in soon! Have a question? Please ask in the comments!