Austin-based startup Gowalla makes the 50 Best Websites 2010

Gowalla is a service that let’s you “check-in” to places you go to using your smart phone and then it lets you add comments or photos of the place you just checked-in.

Gowalla also tells you if your friends are or have been in that location recently.

They have a big competitor, Foursquare which has a similar service but it is not as fun, and it is not made in Texas!

Gowalla let’s you create trips around locations you’ve checked in. You get very cool stamps for places you’ve visited and you also earn pins. The design of the website, all the graphics they create for stamps and pins are very well put together, Gowalla’s website is a beautiful product.

One of the features I like the most is the Gowalla Passport which is essentially your profile page, it is organized in a way that highlights the site’s best features such as pictures, comments, stamps, and pins. This area of the site is highly customizable, and Gowalla’s team has put together some really nice designs to help you get started.

TIME magazine got it right, Gowalla is one of the best 50 websites of 2010. Congratulations y’all!