Gowalla: Who is getting played?

Gowalla is a goe-locational social networking “game”. Players use their mobile device to log their visits to Spots. Spots can be historical sites, landmarks and, low and behold…businesses. When players “check in” at a Spot, they receive a reward. Sometimes the reward is a virtual token which can be traded through the game and sometimes it is a coupon or other incentive for the business they have visited. This is a great way for businesses to attract customers. The customer comes to the store to score a “check in”, but once they are there, you are able to shoot them a coupon to actually motivate them to buy. I think Gowalla could easily adapt its “game” model to become a geo based version of Yelp. Players would not only get points for “check ins”, but for writing reviews. What are the opportunities and challenges you see with this approach?