One disadvantage Gowalla has long had over Foursquare is the lack of a full read/write API, which Foursquare has sported since last November. Today, that’s no longer true.
The startup today announced that their full API is active and available to all third-party developers. The startup first announced their API availability back in February, but was limited to read-access only. With the release of the full check-in API, third-party apps can now create check-ins on behalf of users using the implementation of OAuth 2.0, which allows users to securely grant access to their Gowalla accounts.
OAuth 2 support had been at the heart of the delay in releasing the full API, as Gowalla had said in the past they wanted to do it right. The industry has slowly shifted from OAuth WRAP to 2.0, and Gowalla wanted to make sure they were taking full advantage. Still, the company’s lack of a write-capable API has held it back while others have taken full advantage of the development community to thrust them forward. Multi-check-in apps like Check.in could fully utilize the APIs from Foursquare and Brightkite, for example, but not Gowalla.
Still, Gowalla is a major player in the space, and will become even more so with its new capabilities. It will be interesting to see what developers do now that they have what they’ve wanted for a long time.
