Gowalla is a location-based social check-in application that lets people keep up with their friends in the real world by checking in at places, sharing their location, and collecting stamps and passport-style travel memories. Originally launched in 2007 as a pioneering location-based social game, Gowalla was acquired by Facebook in 2011 and wound down in 2012, then relaunched by founder Josh Williams in March 2023 as an iOS app before active development was paused in April 2023. The app remains available on the App Store and continues to operate on a limited basis, recruiting early testers through its Street Team program. Gowalla historically published a Check-In API with OAuth 2 support (2010), but no public developer API, SDK, or documentation is available today. This profile was surfaced as a portfolio company of GV (Google Ventures) and added to the API Evangelist network as a consumer-sector lead.
Gowalla is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Consumer, Location, Social, and Check-in.
Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the
Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so
Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite.
If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your
provider repo — the
applicability map is public and we will correct it.
Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for
this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero:
never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and
several others — scorable at all.
The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them,
because the conditional facet above carries the other
15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped
maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal
weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/gowalla: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts.
Submit an artifact on GitHub — free →Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →
aid: gowalla
deliveryModel:
model: unknown
open_source: false
commercial: false
callable_host: false
label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
confidence: low
source:
- none
generated: '2026-08-28'
method: derived
accessModel:
pricing: unknown
onboarding: unknown
trial: false
try_now: false
public: false
label: Unknown
confidence: low
source: []
generated: '2026-07-22'
method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/gowalla.png
name: Gowalla
description: Gowalla is a location-based social check-in application that lets people keep up with their friends in the real
world by checking in at places, sharing their location, and collecting stamps and passport-style travel memories. Originally
launched in 2007 as a pioneering location-based social game, Gowalla was acquired by Facebook in 2011 and wound down in
2012, then relaunched by founder Josh Williams in March 2023 as an iOS app before active development was paused in April
2023. The app remains available on the App Store and continues to operate on a limited basis, recruiting early testers through
its Street Team program. Gowalla historically published a Check-In API with OAuth 2 support (2010), but no public developer
API, SDK, or documentation is available today. This profile was surfaced as a portfolio company of GV (Google Ventures)
and added to the API Evangelist network as a consumer-sector lead.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/gowalla/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- gv
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: portfolio-lead
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-19'
tags:
- Company
- Consumer
- Location
- Social
- Check-in
- Mobile
- Geolocation
- Maps
tags_raw:
- Company
- Consumer
- Location
- Social
- Check-In
- Mobile
- Geolocation
- Maps
apis: []
common:
- type: ParentCompany
url: https://apis.io/providers/facebook/
name: Facebook
x-relationship: acquired
x-evidence: Originally launched in 2007 as a pioneering location-based social game, Gowalla was acquired by Facebook in
2011 and wound down in 2012, then relaunched by founder Josh Williams in March 2023 as an iOS app before active development
was paus
- type: DomainSecurity
url: security/gowalla-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
url: https://gowalla.com
- type: LandingPage
url: https://gowalla.framer.website/
- type: X
url: https://twitter.com/gowalla
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
email: info@apis.io
x-enrichment:
date: '2026-07-19'
status: backfilled
pass: local-v1
note: backfilled from .gitignore signal + verified work evidence
Discovery needs no key. Ratings and market analysis are Pro.
Get an API key
Free tier, no form to fill in. Signing in shares your email address with us — we
store it to create your key and to recognise you if you sign in with another
provider. See our Privacy Policy and
Terms.
Kin Score
How this is scored →