SXSW confirmed what everyone knew. In the game of location based social networking, there are two giants: Gowalla and Foursquare. Each of them has ridiculously smart, dynamic, mop-haired founders: Josh Williams and Dennis Crowley respectively. Brightkite, the network that allows users to share photos by location, was barely talked about at SXSW unless it was preceded by “What the heck happened to…” Whrrl wasn’t mentioned much either, but it has some very interesting features including a touch of context.

Similar Problems Managing the Funnel

Josh Williams told me that Gowalla is not focused on monetization yet. They have so many ideas for what they want to do with the product that they are focusing all of their resources on building something that is feature rich and usable. Talk to anyone and they will tell you that Gowalla’s user interface is beautiful and elegant. But the next sentence usually is “it really needs search.” Gowalla wanted to try to stay pure and leave it up to the GPS to find every location. Unfortunately, to no fault of Gowalla’s, the GPS on iPhone and Android are not quite there yet. I tweeted a question about the addition of search and the Gowalla team responded by telling me that it will most likely be in version 2.1.

Crowley’s NYU thesis was on Location Based Social Networking. Dodgeball, his first iteration of FourSquare that he eventually sold to Google, was only “10 of 100 pages.” When Google shut down Dodgeball, they decided that the other 90 pages were worth investing time in. The big downfall of Dodgeball was that it did not have the benefit of services like twitter and Facebook. It was all SMS based. Also, there was no real reason to keep checking in. The post checkin experience did not exist in Dodgeball. As Crowley says, seeing what happens after checkin is the “one armed bandit”. It is what keeps people coming back.

Dennis Crowley told an audience at the Pepsi Podcast Playground that Foursquare has no business development people and that everything they have done to date is opportunistic. He later told the Ad Club of Boston that their funnel is essentially overflowing and that they have more incoming emails than they can keep track of. This is the opposite problem of most businesses, but a big problem nonetheless. No organization wants a reputation for being hard to work with.

The app has evolved and the experience at SXSW was based on rewarding people with SXSW specific badges based on going to combinations of places. For instance I got a Piggy (actual name) for hitting up a bunch of awesome BBQ joints. This may be because Foursquare was forthcoming with their roadmap saying that they are actively working on context based pushes, no small undertaking. What is that? Let’s say they know you like BBQ and that you go every Tuesday. If you happen to be in the area of the Salt Lick, Stubbs or Ironworks at that time FourSquare will ping you and let you know that you’re in the vicinity of a place you might like. As Crowley says “Foursquare will let you know it’s time for fun.” They are also working on experiences that benefit loyalists who are not necessarily the mayor.

Flash back to SXSW

When I talked to Williams, I jabbed him by saying that SXSW was the ultimate battleground for Location Based Social Networking. He joked with me (a little) and said “Oh. You’re here to perpetuate that?” There was a soft confidence in his voice and a smile as I explained to him that I was just really curious to see how it all plays out. Williams knew that he had big plans. Gowalla had many giveaways and special items that you could find randomly by checking in. They gave away VIP badges via the app. They gave everyone a virtual Livestrong bracelet [which I forgot to drop at Lance Armstrong's bike shop when I was in his conference room. Damn!]. There were also random items that could be redeemed at local businesses, like a free taco and One Taco. I was given one by a kind soul that I later dropped at Guero’s just for the irony. But that’s the beauty of items in Gowalla. Unlike FourSquare, you can leave items for friends or you can arrange to meet at a spot so you can give them an item.

Checkins Not Guns

Crowley told the Ad Club that there is no Location Based Networking war. “We aren’t looking to squash anyone. We’re all looking for our place in this eco-system. It’s not a winner-take-all.” He told me that FourSquare is focused only on their upcoming scaling challenges. They are very close to (and maybe surpassed by the time you are reading this) 1 million users and they got there faster than both Facebook and Twitter. Crowley says that photos are on the table, but that being bulletproof and scaling is their top priority. “We’re going to hit 1 Million users I said ‘That’s great!’” said Crowley “My engineers said ‘That’s terrible!’”. Having the fastest application that works is more important to Crowley than elegant front ends and additional features right now. “Gowalla and Whrrl has pictures, but they also do not have near the user base that we do.” he said. Basically they have the luxury of being able to scale while watching the other products to see what is working before they implement.

The two CEOs are drastically different. If you liken them to SXSW bands, Josh Williams is more Broken Bells and Crowley? How about Japandroids. They do both say that they aren’t worried about the other one, that they have their own agendas and that there isn’t really a battle for LBS supremacy. I hope that does not give someone else with killer instinct the opportunity to come in and squash them both.

Photos by the Ad Club.