Last blog post, I wrote how MySpace was integrating with Facebook by allowing people to connect with Facebook, but still explore content from MySpace. This week, the world of social media witnessed yet another integration.
On Thursday, location sharing service Gowalla released their
latest edition, Gowalla 3, which integrates Foursquare and Facebook Places into one interface. Now when someone uses Gowalla, they can see where all their friends check in regardless of what platform they used. Also, if someone uses Gowalla to check in, they can still be eligible for the deals that may exists for a user who checks in with Foursquare or Facebook Places. This was a very bold move by Gowalla. Like I have said previously, Gowalla has the best experience, but was just lagging in the footrace to get users early on. Currently, it only has 600,000 users compared to Foursquare’s 5 million, and it was only time until they fell so far back that they became irrelevant. Now by adding integration and a few other cool features, they may have not only given themselves a second chance at success, but also rewrote the rules for social networks.
Last week’s decision by MySpace to integrate with Facebook was an interesting one, but not game changing. This on the other hand is really quite unprecedented because you would not expect a young start up to admit their competitor’s success so early on. Yet, I would not call this surrender, but more a medium shaping event since it no longer matters what service your friends use. Perhaps if MySpace did a variation of this earlier, they would have been better off. Then again, it’s possible that Foursquare and Facebook will block the people that check in with Gowalla so we’ll need to watch how this all plays out. Regardless, integration could be the next big wave for entrepreneurs in social media where no longer is it necessary to beat Facebook, but rather it is vital to live off it. Therefore, Gowalla’s decision to integrate doesn’t just affect location sharing, but social media as a whole.
