Look out, Foursquare! Gowalla adds trips and bookmarks

Software is a lot more fun when there's a little drama involved, which is why I'm thoroughly enjoying the rivalry between location-based social gaming apps Foursquare and Gowalla.

In the beginning, there was no clear reason to choose one over the other, but their featuresets have started to diverge in an interesting way: while Foursquare courts local businesses and works to get discounts for its users, Gowalla is focusing on the social side of its app. Now you can create and share trips with your friends on Gowalla and bookmark spots you enjoy.

Gowalla already included some recommended trips, but now users can add and share up to 5 of their own. Each trip can include 20 different spots, and you can assign them categories like "bar crawl" or "nature hike." Of course, Gowalla will keep track of your progress toward completing a trip, and mark it as completed once you check in at all of the locations.

Bookmarks aren't as big a deal as trips, but they're still quite useful - and, more importantly, Foursquare doesn't have them yet. Having a quick way to check up on (and check into) your favorite places is definitely. You can't add bookmarks from any of the Gowalla mobile apps, but soon you'll be able to. For now, you can still access your bookmarks from your phone.

Tags: bookmarks, checkin, foursquare, gowalla, location-based, mobile, socialnetworking, trips