Gowalla: Social City Travel Guide
Gowalla evolves to a social city travel guide: check-ins as a commodity, storytelling at heart; http://eicker.at/Gowalla
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Google Street View Deutschland
Google Street View startet in Deutschland. Zumindest startet Google Street View in Oberstaufen; http://eicker.at/Oberstaufen
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Gerrit Eicker
AA: “Google Street View vor dem Start in Deutschland: Die Marktgemeinde Oberstaufen (Oberallgäu) wird ab Dienstag, Punkt 10.30 Uhr, der erste Ort in Deutschland sein, der in dem umstrittenen Dienst zu sehen ist – noch vor Metropolen wie Berlin oder München. … In dem umstrittenen Google Street View-Projekt sieht Oberstaufens Bürgermeister Walter Grath ‘gar kein Problem’. In Oberstaufen – der Ort ist laut Aussage von Bürgermeister Grath ein klarer Befürworter des umstrittenen Internet-Angebots – wird am Dienstag eigens dafür eine symbolische Hochzeit gefeiert. Offiziell. Samt Google-Sprecher Kay Oberbeck und einer Hochzeitstorte.”
SZ: “Die von Datenschützern kritisierte Ansicht von Straßen und Privathäusern soll erst in den nächsten Wochen freigeschaltet werden. Nur in Oberstaufen im Allgäu ist schon die ganze Stadt zu sehen – auf besonderen Wunsch der Gemeinde, die hofft, damit mehr Touristen in den Ort zu locken. … Deutschlandweit hatten 240.000 Bürger Einspruch dagegen eingelegt, dass ihre Häuser in Google Street View zu sehen sein werden.”
SO: “Google Street View ist ein Internetdienst, bei dem sich Nutzer in Fußgängerperspektive durch die Straßen von Städten bewegen und Rundum-Panoramen der Straßenzüge betrachten können. Street View ist bei Datenschützern umstritten, weil es nach deren Ansicht private Details über das Wohnumfeld von Menschen verrät. Bis Jahresende will der Dienst mit Panorama-Ansichten von Straßen der 20 größten Städte Deutschlands aufwarten. Mehr als 244.000 Haushalte in den 20 Städten hatten beantragt, ihre Wohnhäuser in dem Google-Dienst unkenntlich zu machen.“
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Gerrit Eicker
Jarvis: “Germany, what have you done? – Street View is online in Germany and it includes – or rather, excludes – 244,000 addresses that Germans have demanded be pixelated. They have, in their word, demanded their Verpixelungsrecht. … In the land of Deutschnet… Germany has now diminished the public. It has stolen from the public. – This is not a matter of privacy. And don’t tell me it has a damned thing to do with the Nazis and Stasi; that’s patently absurd. If anything, the Stasi would have exercised their Verpixelungsrecht to obscure their buildings from public view, taking advantage of the cloak of secrecy the idea provides. That’s the danger of this. – This is an issue of publicness. These are public visions now obscured.“
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Gerrit Eicker 08:40 on 13. September 2011 Permalink |
ATD: “Gowalla, long-time rival to Foursquare, today announced a new direction for its social location service. The Austin, Texas-based company will attempt to offer a hybrid between a social app and a content guide, focused around local experiences. – Instead of checking in, Gowalla users will now create ‘stories’ when they meet up to hang out together. These are basically group check-ins, as on Facebook where a user can tag multiple friends at a place. After that, any tagged person can contribute photos and other content to the story, capturing it as a communal experience.”
VB: “Check-ins are a bit more of a transactional model, we wanted something that was faster and more connected and saved that memory in a way that I could share with my friends,” Gowalla founder and chief executive Josh Williams (pictured) said. “Our goal is to inspire people to get out.”
GigaOM: “Gowalla, like many other check-in services, has had trouble keeping pace with Foursquare. But the location startup is relaunching its service with an eye toward becoming more of a city travel guide, downplaying the role of check-ins in favor of discovery, travel and storytelling. – The relaunch is an important step for Gowalla, which needs to find a better way to differentiate itself. It had tried to emphasize games early on with virtual goods called items, which could be collected and traded. But it announced last month that it was ending the use of items and was refocusing on its core mission of encouraging people to go out and explore the world.”
Gowalla: “[W]e will be removing Items completely with the next release of Gowalla. 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. It now causes more distraction than joy for the vast majority of our community.”
TC: “So will this small pivot work for Gowalla? Well, they’re certainly focusing on the right areas. Check-ins are now a commodity, the real value of location lies in both augmenting personal experiences and providing useful information. Gowalla is trying to find the sweet spot between both. They’re a mobile travel guide and a well-conceived location-based sharing tool. … You can also share all of this data to Facebook and Twitter – and yes, you can still check-in through Gowalla and send it to Foursquare. – The travel aspect is potentially even bigger. While there are a lot of people going after this problem, no one has nailed the mobile travel guide so far. When someone does, it’s going to be massive. Gowalla has a pretty decent shot of doing something unique here because of all the data they’ve been collecting over time.“