[tiramisu]

I used both Gowalla and Foursquare when they launched. The reason I stopped using Gowalla was that they were pushing game features that distracted from simply keeping a check-in record of places you visited. Being a Foursquare mayor is simple and makes intuitive sense (you are mayor because you like a place and go there a lot), but Gowalla was sending you on what were essentially scavenger hunts, pushing you to visit places in order to complete a map or theme that they had created.

"Game-ification" was/is a popular app strategy but not everyone wants to make everything they do into a scored game. Sometimes you just want to record and/or communicate.