Gowalla to remove virtual items features as it gears up for relaunch

Social location service also removing notes, although only temporarily.

Social location service Gowalla is making some changes to its apps, including the removal of the virtual items which caused such a buzz around the company in its early days.

The app launched alongside Foursquare in 2009, but has not matched the growth of the latter service since. CEO Josh Williams has published a blog post explaining the rationale behind the new changes.

"As Gowalla has grown we’ve added many new features to the product. Some have had great success. Others haven’t worked out as well as we’d hoped. After the two-plus years of consistent feedback and amazing experiences, we believe this is an opportune time to  prune the branches that were twisted in order to focus on the experience we desire to cultivate," he writes.

Williams notes that virtual items have been a part of Gowalla since the beginning, but says "fewer than half a percent of our active community makes use of them", saying that they now cause "more distraction than joy for the vast majority of our community".

He also says other developers may be able to make more of the idea of virtual items and social location. "The concept of intangible virtual goods inhabiting some form of physical space is a remarkable one. Perhaps someone will pick up this torch and explore the idea further."