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And The LBS Wars Rage
RJMetrics today released some interesting factoids focusing on Foursquare and Gowalla’s user basis. Because all “traffic” posts are inherently dry, vapid and devoid of any and all excitement what should make this one so different?
Let’s take a wonderful magic carpet ride, say back to the beginning of 1999. Aside from the hair splitting concern of every computer blowing up and reconstructing itself simultaneously (which I do believe is what actually occurred) on December 31st, there was a very similar dilemma going on between competing search engines. Anyone care to take a guess on which two…excite and metacrawler?
Guess I was way off: Google and Yahoo. Yahoo was a traffic monster (385 million page views per day source) and although Google was beginning their thrill ride of a growth spirt, they were still relatively small. Aww…where are these two companies today?
Yep, you guessed it, completely reversed. Gowalla might fall to the free range traffic spike that Foursquare is experiencing now; however, I highly doubt with Foursquare’s spartan “simply check in” interface, that the service will ultimately survive. Besides, this location based app culture is far from finished baking therefore, no one has crossed that mythical finish line yet.
Personally I would love to see a SCVNGR, Hot Potato, or Get Glue win this more than Gowalla (most used by me out of the rest) or Foursquare. What do you all think? Have something that blows me out of the water, don’t be afraid to throw it into the comments.

