Gowalla trims Items virtual rewards from mobile check-in app

Location-based mobile social network Gowalla will pare down its service, eliminating a number of signature features in an effort to refine its user experience. Most notably, the next release of Gowalla will eliminate Items--virtual rewards given when users check in at designated locations, some of them linked to real-world promotions and prizes. "While they have been a trademark feature of Gowalla since the beginning--one that our entire team poured much effort and passion into--fewer than half a percent of our active community makes use of them," Gowalla founder and CEO Josh Williams writes on the startup's blog. "It now causes more distraction than joy for the vast majority of our community."

Gowalla will stop awarding new Items sometime during the next few weeks. It will then remove the feature from its app and its API. "We are, however, exploring a way for our users to download the data associated with their Items," Williams states. "The concept of intangible virtual goods inhabiting some form of physical space is a remarkable one. Perhaps someone will pick up this torch and explore the idea further. You've taught us a lot about how this can work."

Future updates of the Gowalla app also will delete Notes, although Williams states a simplified, more unified version of the feature could return at some point in the future. Gowalla will retain Pins--achievements awarded upon the completion of specific tasks or trips--although "much of the fat surrounding them will be trimmed," Williams adds.

Gowalla's moves follow days after social networking giant Facebook announced it will abandon its Places mobile check-in solution with the introduction of new privacy and location sharing features. Facebook will remove the Places check-in tool from future versions of its mobile applications--users who wish to share their current whereabouts can instead add their city-level location or tag a specific site in any post.

It appears increasingly evident that Gowalla rival foursquare has won the battle for mobile check-in mindshare. Foursquare now tops 10 million users worldwide, and earlier this summer, the startup completed a new $50 million funding round, boosting its overall value to $600 million.

Despite media buzz and investor excitement around the category, mobile check-in services remain a niche interest according to data issued in May by digital research firm comScore. Only 16.7 million U.S. wireless subscribers checked in at local destinations via mobile device in March 2011, corresponding to 7.1 percent of the total nationwide mobile population, comScore reported. Smartphone users exhibit a far greater interest in mobile check-in tools, making up 76.3 percent of all check-in app users.

For more:
- read this Gowalla Blog entry

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