Foursquare beats Gowalla and Brightkite in mobile check-in Battle

uTest is massive software testing marketplace, with more than 25,000 testers worldwide. For 10 days in May, 300 of these testers in nearly 40 countries ran tests on the “big three” of mobile check-in services: Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite. The results are in.

What’s a Bug Battle?

The main focus of this test was to find bugs and problems with the software. In fact, uTest has made a game out of it. The tester who finds the largest number of interesting and provides good feedback wins a cash prize. Over the 10 days of the Bug Battle, uTesters not only searched for bugs but also ranked the three services based on location accuracy, social media integration, status recognition features, opportunities to earn deals, ease-of-use.

What were the results?

Short version:

Foursquare was the best service by a long way. It had the least bugs of all three services (under 200 in 10 days, across 40 countries), and came 1st in almost all of the other categories

Long version:

There were only 900 bugs reported between all three services – which isn’t great for a 10-day test, even if it is over 40 countries. But Brightkite had the most bugs at 377, followed closely by Gowalla at 316.

As you can see from the above chart, Foursquare was the most popular service pretty much across the board. But there were other interesting pieces of information that came out of this. While each of the services was ranked by category, testers were also surveyed to find out which category they felt was most imporant:

Ease-of-use is the most critical area where a check-in service has to perform – and Foursquare took that one. Although it should be noted that accuracy was a close second, which was the only category that Foursquare didn’t win, losing out to Gowalla.

The survey also had a section on the concerns that users had with check-in services. Amongst the things that would drive people away from these apps were:

Once again, we see privacy at the forefront of things that worry people about mobile – as well as the eternal question “what are my friends doing?”

For the full study: http://www.utest.com/sites/default/files/uTest_Q2_Bug_Battle_Report_Check_In_Apps.pdf

What we think?

While it’s interesting that the uTesters were worried about the privacy implications of check-in apps, it’s clear that the users of these apps really aren’t. Foursquare claims several hundred thousand check-ins every day, and says that its number of check-ins increased by 50% last month. This particular breed of mobile location service is growing fast, and security concerns seem to be pretty secondary in most minds.