Gowalla – Why?

Gowalla

Following a fair few Tweets from Gowalla users, I decided to give the application a go recently. I have been “checking in” for over a week now and I’m still at a loss to explain to myself why I’m doing it.

I’ve achieved a few “stamps” and added five or six new locations around Bangor and Belfast but that seems to be where the “fun” ends. Other than the opportunity to add a few humourous comments to my check-ins, which I could easily do by Tweeting and geo-tagging my Tweets, what else is there?

When thinking about the program, I wonder what the business model is. I can imagine that when there are enough spots created across the planet (one of mine was number 928,345!), there may be an opportunity to “sell” a geo-location based coupon or voucher system to retailers. A similar system is reportedly being planned by Apple for the next generation of iPhones and indeed, an advertising platform was mentioned by Apple within the last week.

However, the Gowalla database relies on users populating it with accurate information, something that in the short time I have been using it, isn’t happening. For example, I was standing directly outside (within six feet) of the Cookie Box in Belfast. The system wouldn’t allow me to check in as it had the Cookie Box 548 metres to the east. A number of other locations had two versions of the same check in spot hundreds of metres apart.

This is a bit of a shame, as the website and the iPhone programme are bright, user friendly and colourful. I also had a sense of camaraderie with the other users (those I know through Twitter anyway) which when relying on the early adaptors to spread the word about Gowalla, must be the Holy Grail for the designers and developers.

Perhaps I’m not the target demographic for this application? I don’t read Wired regularly, or code/design anything, and I may be missing some important element that would make it all click into place for me but I don’t get it. There’s no meat!

Anyone else care to enlighten me?

Vintage

I’ve hundreds of these old pieces of vintage sheet music from when I was selling them on Ebay. I used to import them via Ebay in packs of 100 which worked out around 53p each and then sold them, depending on my perception of their value and condition between £4.99 and £6.99. I did pretty well out of it for some time, until Ebay got greedy and bumped their charges up astronomically and made it uneconomical for me (and really pissed me off as well).

Over the couple of years that I had the Ebay shop, I had the pleasure of making some great sales to nice people across the world. There were a number of love stories from fairly elderly people about how this title they were buying was the music of their first dance together, and lots of sales to folk whose father, uncle or grandad wrote the lyrics/music/was in the big band featured on the cover. The main attraction for me, and at times it was uncomfortable to let go of some of them, was the beautiful artwork. I know that a number of buyers were buying the sheet music to frame it, rather than play it. But who can argue with a sale of £220 to someone in Japan?

They’re all now sitting in a piano stool waiting. Some date from the 1890s and others from as recent as the 1980s and they have that musty scent common to old paper items, with the occasional mouse mark on some of the corners. What are they waiting for? For someone to come up with a decent suggestion for what to do with them all. There’s no way they’re going into the recycling bin – they’re far too beautiful for that and they’re history of course!