I spent some time this weekend playing with MyTown – an iPhone app with a location component that is claiming more than 500K users.  You may know them from blog titles such as “Foursquare Who? Gowalla What?” that reference MyTown’s reported 500K users and 31M check-ins.

So what’s the deal?  Is MyTown really kicking the collective asses of Foursquare and Gowalla?

My humble opinion is this:

Not really.

MyTown is a monopoly style game in which the properties are businesses in your neighborhood.  Checking in at businesses in your neighborhood earns you coins, which can then be used to “buy” those locations, giving you the opportunity to collect rent when other people check in to those places.

Unlike the other social check-in apps, MyTown encourages you to check in to places without actually going to them.  The emphasis is on the gameplay, not the utility, or your precise location.  The UI is very nice, and the app makes all sorts of pleasing jingling and whistling noises as you tap and accumulate coins.  It’s easy to kill time playing MyTown. But comparing MyTown with apps like Gowalla and Foursquare that are actually about getting off your couch and venturing out into the real world is a bit silly. MyTown could very well turn out to be a big hit with lots of players and a profitable virtual goods business. But the location component of MyTown is more a simple way to customize the gameplay for each player, than it is a hook into the real world. While Foursquare and Gowalla are location based apps with some gameplay, MyTown is gameplay with a dash of location. Their check-in and user data should be judged accordingly.Related articles by Zemanta

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