Update: I am no longer updating this post. I am now helping out with the talented group at Wallabee. For the ultimate Gowalla guide, I encourage you to check out Wallabee.

Gowalla is a fun virtual geocaching game that you can play with your iPhone, Android, Palm OS and certain Blackberry mobile devices. The game works utilizing the GPS chip in the phone so you can “check in” at places or “spots” around the world. The game is played like holding your own virtual passport. When you visit different countries with your paper passport it is stamped with the country you visited. With Gowalla your virtual passport is stamped with every spot you check into!

When you check in to spots you may find virtual prizes or “items” that you can collect along the way and add them to your virtual stash. Also, there are trips that you can complete that can give you a “pin”. One trip is called “Cup o’ Joe” and will give you a pin if you visit 10 coffee shops.

I have a lot of fun with the game and find myself wanting to leave the house just to visit new places. The game is dependent on people to create new spots that may not appear in the app because the location hasn’t been discovered yet. I wanted to make a guide and general etiquette tips towards playing Gowalla to help new users as well as provide some consistency to naming spots. The below tips is not required reading to play Gowalla but you will find much of the information below informative to enjoying the game just a little bit more.

Note: Some of the technical tips below apply to the iPhone app and may or may not apply to your mobile phone.

Gowalla Intro by Team Gowalla

Creating New Spots
When you add a new spot there are some points to consider before adding the place. First, you can refresh the list of spots by sliding your finger down and revealing “pull down to refresh” at the top of the screen. Slide down further and release to refresh the list. Secondly, make sure you have a good GPS fix on your location. GPS barely works well when indoors or if you do not have a direct view of the sky. Thirdly, always check that the spot doesn’t currently exist.  If it’s already created then there is no need to create a new spot. Duplicate entries for the same spot can create confusion. If you make a mistake creating the spot it’s good to know that you can make some minor modifications to the name, category and GPS location when you visit the website. When you are ready to add the new spot try to follow some of these tips:

• Spelling: Spell the location correctly. Other users will check in at your spot so it’s important to get the spelling right.

• Capitalization: Generally title capitalization works in which the first letter of each word in the location is capitalized. Using “all caps” or capitalizing all letters is never a good idea unless it’s a known acronym or title that calls for it. For instance:
  • “Burger King” would be better then “burger king” or “BURGER KING”. Use dashes if the place has one like ”Chick-fil-A”.
  • “ABC Liquors”, “AMC Theaters” or “BJ’s Wholesale Club” would have partial all-caps titles since that’s what the company name is.
  • Don’t abbreviate the spot name if it’s not common, for instance most people would not know what “WDW” is. Rather you should type the whole name “Walt Disney World”. Common acronyms and abbreviated places like “IKEA”, “CVS” or “AT&T” would be acceptable. Make sure to capitalize all the letters in the title for these.

• Try to keep the spot name short: the spot should just be the name of the place. Short names help new players find spots easier on their mobile device. Remember you also have a description field to add more information. In most cases it’s not necessary to add the word “The” at the beginning or what their specialty is in their title. You can chose to include it or not. If it’s a well known place it may not be necessary.
  • “Starbucks” is fine vs. “Starbucks Coffee”. Most people associate that Starbucks is the well-known coffee joint located around the world. But what if in your community you also have a “Starbucks” that was the name of a video store? You could include the word “video store” in the title or keep in short and just place it in the description. Also, there is an associated icon for each place you create. So for Starbucks Coffee you would see a picture of a coffee cup and for the Starbucks video store there would be a picture of a ticket stub for the “Other Entertainment” category.
  • “Target” works vs. “Target – Main Street”. It is unnecessary to include the street/subdivision or area of town that it’s located in. You can add the location to the description. Remember that there is an associated map location & city with every spot you create so users could easily associate where that spot is.
  • “Carrabba’s Italian Grill” or “Carrabba’s Restaurant” are two different ways to name a spot. However, “Carrabba’s” is fine and then categorized under Food-Italian. So Italian Grill and Restaurant could be omitted.

• Place it in the right category: As Gowalla get’s popular more categories will be created. In the meantime try to place each spot in it’s most-regonizable category. Some places could be placed into many categories, for instance take “Dunkin’ Donuts”. You could place it under Food-Coffee Shop, Food-Bakery, Food-Doughnuts. Probably the best category is Food-Doughnuts, Donuts is in the name but Dunkin’ Donuts is most famous and recognizable for their donuts and their product line is mostly donuts. Many people place this in a Coffee Shop category because of their well advertised coffee. But let’s face it, Dunkin’ is more a bakery then a coffee shop.

• Use the description: It’s optional, but be creative if you add one. You could add a short phrase or tip about the location. For instance if a local pub has a happy hour with reduced prices would be a nice tip to add to the description. Generally it’s not a good idea to copy and paste several paragraphs from a website. Also, operating hours, phone numbers and web addresses really don’t belong here. That kind of information is readily available elsewhere. Focus on a creative tip!

Check In
What constitues a check-in? Do you have to actually visit the spot or if you can see it a down the street is that allowed? Actually there are no rules or instructions to the game. The app will only let you check in to a spot when you are near the place based on your GPS location. You can’t sit at home and check in at you local Starbucks that is miles away down the street. However, if you are in a mall which has many retail and restaurant locations you could check in to multiple spots within minutes. There is nothing wrong with that although if you do check into multiple locations you may want to inform your friends to turn off push notifications.

You can establish your own rules on checking into spots. Over the course of playing the game I changed how I play. At first it was all about just checking in at places I stop at. Now I’m actively looking for items sort of like a scavenger hunt. Something me and my friends have introduced is multiple checking in if we visited the spot Before Gowalla or B.G. as we refer to it.

Items
A item is a virtual prize you pick up when you visit a spot. You can collect items when visiting spots in two ways. The first way is to trade items. You simply swap an item in your pack with an item at the spot. The second way is to receive a bonus item. However, visiting a spot may or may not give you a bonus item every time. There is a algorithm for the app on how bonus items are awarded. One tip is that once you have 10 items in your pack you will cease to gain new bonus items. Also, bonus items are awarded based on the spot category. For instance you could receive a Baseball Cap for checking in to a Stadium or Sports/Outdoors or an Americano for checking into a Coffee Shop. Gowalla rewards you based on karma, found spots by giving up items and you will be rewarded new items by visiting more spots.

A fun part of the game is to try to collect all the items. It’s like a scavenger hunt to find as many items as you can. There’s a great wiki that lists all the items that are in the Gowalla universe and where they are commonly found. Also, make sure to check out Gowalla Tools as it can help you on your quest for hard to find items! Both of these are great resources!

Collection of Items
New users to Gowalla need to understand the difference between “Items your Carrying” and your “Collection”. Over the years the titles have changed as they are also referred to as your “pack” and your “vault”. Basically items your carrying can be used to drop off at spots to become a founder or trade for other items that you need. Your Collection is more permanent. When you add an item to your collection, it stays there and can’t be moved. It’s vaulted and part of your permanent collection. Part of the goal is to complete the collection of items. Currently there is over 130 items to collect with Gowalla introducing new items at least every month. So get out there and find those items!

Pins
As mentioned earlier you can collect pins for completing trips or challenges. See below “Trips” for more information.

Trips
Simply put, a trip can be a collection of spots or set of tasks to be completed which is called a “challenge”. For instance there is a trip called Chicago Championship Chase. To complete the trip you have to visit 5 spots related to sports in the Chicagoland area.

Featured trips have been either made by Team Gowalla or by one of it’s players and then promoted by Team Gowalla. Friend Trips were added in late January 2010 that enable any user to create a trip from the website and then share it with their friends. Creating a trip is easy. Visit the website and find your first spot you want to add to your trip. Click on “Add To Trip” underneath the GPS map. Do this with each spot you want to add to your trip. Then publish for your friends to see when they use the Gowalla app on their phone. At this current time you can create up to 10 trips.

You don’t need to friend a Gowalla user to complete their trip and earn the pin. You can simply bookmark their trip from the trip page. Once you bookmark the trip you can then view this trips from your mobile device.

You can also see if there are trips for a particular spot. If there are related trips to the spot you would see them at the at the spot page underneath the map, description and highlights.

When you complete a challenge you earn a pin as well. A challenge pin is earned by completing a set of tasks. One of the tasks could be checking into spots, taking photos at a spot, going to a certain spot at a specific time or simply tweeting something when you check in to a spot. Earning a “challenge” pin can vary depending on the parameters set by Gowalla. Here are some Challenges to give you an idea. It’s a good idea to follow the Gowalla blog or Twitter account to find out about new challenges the are introduced.

Highlights
Highlights is a new social connection added to Gowalla that let’s each user showcase their favorite and memorable spots to others.

Some highlights you can attach to spots are Best Cup, Watering Hole and Date night. Once you specify a spot as your highlight you can then see it on the spot page. For instant the screenshot to the right is highlights attached to the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World.

Creator, Founders and Top 10
The creator of the spot is the person who add’s the new spot. A founder is anyone who wants to drop off an item at the spot. It’s not necessary to become a founder of a spot unless it’s a spot you frequent. You can get a pin for founding 10, 25 and 50 spots. Gowalla tracks the top 10 visitors to the spot. The people who frequent the spot most often then anyone else are listed under the Top 10. Recently a change was made to only show the Top 10 in the past 90 days.

Featured Spots
These are special spots and landmarks created either by Team Gowalla or regular Gowalla users. They are identifiable by a custom stamp or icon. For instance, there is a featured spot for the world famous Hollywood sign landmark in California. It’s important to note that not all spots with a custom stamp are considered featured. Gowalla has been teaming up with a few companies like Chipotle Restaurants and Holiday Inn’s and those locations have a customized stamp based on their logo’s.

Bookmarks
Bookmarks are spots and trips that are your favorites that can be saved for quick viewing on your mobile device. Visit the Gowalla.com website, select a spot and click on “Bookmark”. This is also a good way for you to save those spots you need to complete a trip.

Editing & Correcting Spots
Only the creator of the spot, Team Gowalla and the Street Team Elite can edit the name, category, size location and GPS location. You can only edit spots from the website at this time. Once you get back home go to the spot page and locate the “Spot Tools” drop down at the right just under the picture of the map then select “Edit”. The creator of a spot also has the ability to delete the spot entirely as long as no one else has checked in to that spot and no items were dropped there. It’s important to note that you cannot move a spot far away from where it was originally created. Only Team Gowalla can do this.

If you notice that a spot created by someone else is not correctly located or the name is misspelled you should contact Gowalla & it’s Street Team Elite to have it fixed. You can do this by using the “Spot Tools” drop down and select “Report a Problem”located at the spot page. Reported spots are sent to Spotfixer.com and queued to be edited and corrected.

It’s also important to note if you see anything considered questionable about the spot such as it’s name, description or photos in the spot then you should alert Team Gowalla at the Get Satisfaction site or e-mail them at live at gowalla.com. Questionable entries would be profanity or derogatory text or photos in the spot that contain nudity or of some derogatory nature.

Creative Spots
As you play the game you will notice that people can create some interesting spots. There are some creative ones out there. But there are also spots out there that are just plain non-interesting. Creative spots like these: Wall of Gum, Patriotic Yard Art compared to non-interesting spots like these: I-4 Exit 89, Best Shitter in LA. A fun part of the game is to discover new and exciting places. Try to create spots that provide value to other users. Creating “Stuck in Traffic”, “In the Sky” or “Toilet” spots is just plain un-original and not very interesting to other users that play the game.

Also many users like to create their home as their first spot. It’s a common thing and there’s nothing wrong with it. However, caution should be exercised as you might not want to let everyone know where your exact address is.

Who are the Street Team Elite
A group of dedicated individuals who are there to help you fix and edits spots around the world. The team can:

• Fix spots not located in it’s correct GPS coordinates
• Merge duplicate “dupe” spots located at the same locations.
• Misspelling’s or dropped into an incorrect category

Street Team Elite cannot delete spots or move spots that are way off GPS location. Team Gowalla must assist with those. If you are interested in becoming a Street Team Elite by helping fix spots then visit Spotfixer.com and apply!

Friending & Connections to Twitter and Facebook
Becoming friends on Gowalla versus Facebook seems to have a different set of rules. By friending someone on Gowalla you are giving them access to know where you are at certain points of the day. Some people are a little more sensitive to this kind of information being out in the open. On the other hand it’s kinda fun seeing someone you briefly know across the country and the spots they might visit. You will find that the Gowalla community to be a friendly bunch of people. I’ve made friends on Gowalla and met people in real life and gone exploring or as I call it “Gowalla’ing”.

A cool feature of Gowalla is that you can announce your check in’s by broadcasting to your Twitter and Facebook friends. When checking in and adding your comment slide the switch to ON for Twitter and/or Facebook and your check in will show up on those services.

GPS wonkiness
Sometimes the GPS on the phone can’t get a good clean fix on your exact location. The GPS chip in the iPhone is not nearly as good as a dedicated GPS unit. However, to get the best GPS signal you need to have a direct view of the sky. The GPS satellites cannot get a clean fix inside buildings. Thankfully, poorly created GPS coordinates can be edited from the website. Gowalla will let you nudge the GPS location a little bit but you can’t move it miles away. If the location is truly miles away you may have to contact the Street Team Elite (see above) or Gowalla to help move a spot’s location. Expert Tips: 1) Turn on WiFi regardless if your connected to a hotspot. This helps get a fix on your location. 2) When nudging the spot at home use the satellite view button within the Google map to get an exact fix on the spot.

Have Fun, It’s a game
These are just tips to help out. It’s not meant to be a set rulebook or list of procedures you have to follow. It can just help out everyone when playing the game.

A big thank you to the folks at Gowalla for creating such a wonderful app! I know I will look forward to updates and additions of features to the game as it matures.

For general questions check out Gowalla’s community forum located at Get Satisfaction. It’s loaded with interaction between Gowalla users and the development team.

Images © Gowalla Inc.