Now that Facebook has entered the space, Google appears to be ready to take it more seriously, and Foursquare is gaining some real traction, the other players in the location field need to start defining their roles. Of the other players, Gowalla has been doing some interesting stuff around check-in aggregation. But their more interesting play may be around travel. And a small change today points to that.
As you can see on place pages for various airports, Gowalla has begun connecting your travels from destination to destination. So if you check it at SFO then five hours later check in at JFK, they know that you were on a cross-country flight and create a new graphic to showcase that, complete with your miles traveled. Below that they tell your friends about your journey. And they’re even able to see if you had a layover at another airport.
Is it a small feature? Of course. But again, it does point to some of the interesting things Gowalla could do with location in the travel space. Other recent features they’ve launched, such as Highlights, also showcase this. With Highlights, you can make a list of your favorite things a city. This is based around pre-set topics, so there’s a best place for “People Watching” and a best “Watering Hole”, for example. But you can only have one set place for each topic, and so obviously, the emphasis here is to name things in your home city. But imagine if they turned this on for vacations, so you could leave recommendations to your friends?