Feb
3
Loopt and Gowalla Haiti Donations Face-Off
Loopt, a mobile application, announced they are donating $1 for every check-in at Chipotle, Whole Foods or Panera Bread before the end of Sunday. The proceeds will go towards the relief efforts in Haiti and there’s no charge to the Loopt user either. Minutes later, I read that Gowalla, a competing app, will be launching a campaign called “Hearts for Haiti” on Monday, February 8th.
The Hearts for Haiti campaign will take place in the SF Bay Area at three specified locations — two Peet’s coffee shops and the Barenaked Ladies concert. When someone uses Gowalla to check-in at one of those locations during the event, $50 will be donated in to the Red Cross in that person’s name. Gowalla hopes to reach $20,000. In addition to Gowalla’s charitable efforts, the two Peet’s locations will also be donating 10% of sales towards Haiti efforts. Details on when to go where can be found over at the Gowalla Blog.
Okay, it’s great that these two rival apps are working towards a greater cause but… how do you check-in? What does it mean to check-in? Do you live in the dinosaur age and only use your cell phone for calls? It’s okay, because I live in that era as well. In fact, I don’t even do the text thing — I know I know, I get a lot of crap about it…
Well, Loopt and Gowalla are location-based mobile apps for the mobile user. Think of a “Super Twitter” (yes, I agree that Twitter is also very confusing) with an interactive map, sort of… Loopt and Gowalla allow you to share your location, status and photos with friends. These programs also allow you to share events and places with your friends. All this information is then provided conveniently on a detailed interactive map. There wasn’t much information on Gowalla, but Loopt describes itself as a “social compass.” I imagine it’s fairly useful when your friends are out and about and you are looking for something to do that night. Find out where your friends are and what they are doing through the app then, connect. Loopt even alerts you when a friend is nearby!
Anyway, when you “check-in,” you are basically sending an update to your friends. Does that make sense at all? If not, the Business Insider has a step by step slideshow of how Foursquare, a similar app, works. Sorry, this has been a very confusing post… Please comment if you can help explain things better!
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