At Gowalla, many team members are passionate about politics and several of our fondest memories are centered around meeting our favorite politicians at their events. Looking ahead at 2012, we knew we needed to start building tools for politicians and people to more closely connect around the issues that are important to them. This is why today we are announcing several exciting tools.
Today, Gowalla is opening up the Events feature to politicians, providing an innovative way for candidates to educate voters and stay connected. You will now be able to follow some of your favorite politicians on Gowalla to learn where they are while on the campaign trail and what images/comments people are sharing. Plus, if you attend an event from one of the politicians using Gowalla, you will receive a custom Gowalla Passport Stamp. Initially, we are launching this with three politicians (and more are to come): Charlie Crist (I-FL), Rick Perry (R-TX) and Jim Ward (R-AZ). CNN ran a nice piece on this new feature, which you can read here.
We’ve also created a new political category within Gowalla so all Gowalla Passport holders will be able to set-up their own political Events. While some of the categories are currently U.S. focused, others can be used anywhere and we plan to add more international Stamps in the future.