There’s no doubt that Gowalla’s user-interface and graphics undeniably have the upper hand on foursquare from an aesthetic point of view. It also has various features that foursquare lacks, like setting events, setting trips, and item swapping, dropping, and collecting which can be quite beneficial.

On the other hand, foursquare is already winning the race (1 million users to Gowalla’s 150,000), and its usually very hard to have a come-back victory in the world of new technology. With that said, connecting with friends is a major feature of these social media tools, and people are going to use what their friends are using, which in this instance seems to be foursquare.

To answer your question, Gowalla (although a smaller community) has a great deal of potential. With its beautiful aesthetics and incredibly addicting item swapping and collecting features, it could become a very popular Location-Based Social Media Tool. Will it prevail over foursquare? No. But Gowalla’s user population will continue to grow, and at the same time develop into more of an “underground” type of foursquare; and although not as many people will be using it, the people are will be extremely dedicated, or even addicted.

Lately, I’ve also been trying out Gowalla on my iPhone and have really enjoyed it’s superior UI and graphics in comparison to foursquare. Of course, it does not have as many users as foursquare but I see real potential.

Do you see any future potential for Gowalla, or do you see the Location-Based Social Networking game being a one horse race at this point?