As far as location-based, check-in services go, there’s not much beyond the check-in that I find worthwhile. Sure, Foursquare offers specials for mayors, or in some cases just for checking-in. Facebook Places lets you check-in with friends. Google Latitude lets you see where your friends are pretty much in real-time.

But: Every single time I’ve tried to redeem a Foursquare special I’ve had to explain what it is. Or the clerk had no idea how to actually redeem the special, leading to an awkward situation in which we both know I’m being totally up-front and honest w/r/t the special, that I’m not just trying to get something for nothing, but I end up not getting it anyway.

Or: I don’t want to check-in with my Facebook friends because I have no idea how their settings may be set and don’t want to inadvertently compromise their privacy. Not that I have stupid friends, mind you, but Facebook’s privacy settings are about as easy to navigate as a kayak in a hurricane.

And: Who has the time to watch where their friends are and are going all the time? And why would I? Let’s say I see a pile of my friends hanging out at a local coffee shop. Or a bar. They’re all there. Except me. I don’t need a check-in service to make me feel bad about myself; I do that well enough on my own thank you very much.

So: enter Gowalla.

No specials. No mayors. No real-time.

Instead, you have a passport. And the point of Gowalla is to make your passport as awesome as possible. In other word, the point of Gowalla is the journey, not the destination. You collect stamps, pins and items. Some of the pins are accomplishment-based⁽¹⁾. Some of them are for having completed trips.

 

And it’s the trips that I enjoyed while at Walt Disney World.

Here’s an example: I saw that there was a trip called Walk in Walt’s Footsteps. This one interested me because I have a huge amount of respect for Walt Disney. Some of the required stops on the trip were rides I’d have done anyway: The PeopleMover, Carousel of Progress, Spaceship Earth, and One Man’s Dream. I remembered these from our previous trip and enjoyed them.

But some of the others I never would have ridden if it weren’t that I wanted to complete the trip: Peter Pan’s Flight, The Great Movie Ride, WDW Railroad, and The Wildlife Express Train. Of them all, I really enjoyed the WDW Railroad, and I’m really glad Gowalla sort-of pushed me to ride it.

And to me, that’s what a location-based service should do. It’s more than just an over-inflated way of saying “Bo was here.” And it certainly shouldn’t be an advertising conduit. It should be a way to take your trip further, to do things you wouldn’t have done. To push you to explore. In a tech-culture that allows to me watch riots happening on the other side of the world, that offers myriad form of virtual entertainment, I appreciate anything that asks me to experience things for myself.

Especially if it also has really cool stamps.⁽²⁾