The Gowalla location-based social network has launched a new portion of their site called City Pages, where the biggest and most popular check-ins around town are featured. City pages show off the top three highlights within each category (like best live music, best cup, best people watching, and so on) as designated by the Gowalla community. Gowalla City Pages are still limited to a handful of major cities, like San Francisco, New York, Paris, Berlin, London, Vancouver, and others. As a part of the announcement, Gowalla is also offering businesses the opportunity to claim their spot so accurate information is displayed, or buy a custom-made stamp for visitors (and sponsored status for local searches that day).
Those who are unfamiliar with Gowalla will probably be able to liken it most closely to Foursquare, however with this new feature, Gowalla is really differentiating itself. Using a mobile app, you can check into user-created spots, earn badges for completing particular strings of check-ins (trips), and share where you are with friends on Facebook and Twitter. You can also leave comments for spots, or upload pictures of spots to share.
The latest version of the BlackBerry app is pretty solid, and I’m on the verge of ditching Foursquare altogether in favour of Gowalla, as soon as there’s a City Page for Ottawa, Ontario, that is… If you’re interested in giving Gowalla a shot, download links are available below.
[via Gowalla Blog]