Many of us (including myself) have been caught up in the Foursquare frenzy and continue to update our daily stops and visits as we climb the leaderboard. Even CNN has declared Foursquare the next big thing in 2010. As of yesterday, there are now $8.4 million reasons to pay attention to Gowalla. The main difference between Gowalla (based in Austin, Texas) and Foursquare is that Gowalla users can participate anywhere they are connected. Gowalla is available for both Apple’s iPhone and the Android platform, and has approximately 50,000 active members in only ten weeks.  Also, note the high-profile angel investors for Gowalla which include – Jason Calcanis (founder of Santa Monica-based Mahalo) Ron Conway, Kevin Rose, Gary Varynerchuck, Shervin Pishevar and Chris Sacca, and venture firms Greylock Partners, Shasta Ventures, Maples Investments, Alsop-Louie Partners, and Founders Fund. This brings total investment into Gowalla at $10 million. Conversely, Foursquare has $1.35 Million raised as of September 2009.

The interface to use Gowalla is clean and very easy to use. It connects seamlessly to your Facebook or twitter account which maximizes sharing opportunities. One cool thing I have noticed is that you can acquire items within your “passport” tabs (you also get stamps for your passport as you travel along)and pass them along and share them. Then once you tap on the item, you can find out where they have been and who has them. After that, you can decide whether or not to leave the item where you are or keep it for your next stop. There is also a Top-10 Leaderboard for every place you visit and it will also show you how many check-ins you need to climb the Leaderboard. Upon further inspection, there are different “trips” for different cities in the country. I am waiting for a mission in Los Angeles (when will this happen??). You can also acquire different awards within the trips section like Wanderer (check in a five different spots), Code Monkey (check-in at five technology startups) and Engineer (check-in at ten technology start ups). As you can see, there is a huge lean towards tech startups.

Gowalla 1.3 is available now in the Apple app store. Check it out and leave your thoughts and comments below. Also, watch this video for a quick demonstration on how to use Gowalla.