Fun Web Throwback - Check-Ins

In 2007, I was invited to a party at the OKC Co-working Cooperative, which I was a part of. A fledgling company called Gowalla was there to pitch their brand new app for our iPhones. We ate good food, had some strong drinks, and downloaded the app right then and there. A few minutes later, after we had set up our accounts, we hit the check-in button and were gifted shiny new digital stickers.

Gowala had set up various check-in locations throughout Oklahoma City, and every single one of us in the room had one goal: to collect all the digital stickers. They had a good run, at least around here. A few years later, they raised millions of dollars, and I was very excited about a brand new app. Not long after that, Facebook saw a good thing, bought it, and killed that good thing as they do.

Side note: Gowalla made a run at a reboot a few years ago that failed in months.

I piddled around with check-ins on Facebook for a little bit, but the sheer number of bolt-on features the app had accumulated made it really difficult to use. And then the great exodus happened. Facebook had lost its cool factor. We were all on Twitter.

It’s pretty common for me to yearn for the good old days of the early social web. Shoot, I’ve written several posts about that through the years. The early App Store was full of so many bangers: Anchor, Foursquare, Yelp, Meetup. All fun little apps that made sharing and connecting so much fun. Some of these apps still exist, but are shells of their former selves.

Since I’ve moved to hosting my own blog, I realized that I could do whatever the heck I wanted. I have my own podcast creation app to replace Anchor, and now I’ve decided to build my own location check-in app. Actually, it’s not a full app; it’s an Apple shortcut that pulls location info and shoots it to my blog using categories. Then the share card is built and shot out into the world. The hardest part was figuring out what would replace Gowalla’s stickers. Luckily, I live with an artist, so I had my daughter draw a base of custom stickers, and I love how quirky they are.

You’ll start to see a new post type around here: the check-in. I hope you have as much fun seeing them as I have sharing them.