The App Doesn't Have to Do It All

Josh: We have a lot of plans for Gowalla, but lots of those features will wind up on the website, not in the app. There are certain things that are power-user enough or deep enough that it's not worth putting them into the iPhone experience. For us, we definitely want Gowalla to go beyond the iPhone even though that's the primary mode of interaction at this point. We want people to get in the habit of coming back to the website. When you show up at a restaurant and you're about to sit down for dinner on a date, that's not exactly the best time for an immersive Gowalla experience. So, when you're out on your iPhone, you just want to check in quickly and get back to real life. But later, when you have more time to explore, we want to invite you to come back to the website where you can dive in and interact in a deeper way with a different set of features.