Gowalla

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.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub
6.8/100 minimal ▬ flat Agent 0/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
0 APIs
CompanyConsumerLocationSocialCheck-InMobileGeolocationMaps

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
Composite quality — 6.8/100 · minimal
Contract Quality 0.0 / 25
Developer Ergonomics 0.0 / 20
Commercial Clarity 0.0 / 20
Operational Transparency 0.0 / 13
Governance 0.0 / 12
Discoverability 6.8 / 10
Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only
Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 0 / 15
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7
Typed Event Surface 0 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. 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. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Gowalla Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · DNSSEC

SECURITY

Resources

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity
DomainSecurity

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Website
Website

Other 2

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

LandingPage
LandingPage
 X
X

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: gowalla
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: '0.20'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-19'
tags:
- Company
- Consumer
- Location
- Social
- Check-In
- Mobile
- Geolocation
- Maps
apis: []
common:
- 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