There's been a lot of news recently about how people are checking in less with location-based services for a variety of reasons: lack of adoption, the task of having to check in everywhere you go, privacy conerns, or just burning out and thinking it's dumb. I think those people are being ridiculous.

I still check in everywhere I go and my check-ins are automatically aggregated to my site whereswatilo.com (a take-off on Where's Waldo, since Watilo - pronounced "waddle - low" - is my last name).

I don't buy into a lot of what Foursquare has tried to do (like giving badges to incentivize check-ins). I just check in because I think it will be cool to analyze the data in the future.

WeePlaces is one such site that analyzes and plots check-ins. The video below shows some of the places I've checked in according to WeePlaces.

(download)

Click here to download:

4sq.mp4 (3.3 MB)

I just think people are being short-sighted when it comes to the potential of what can be done with the data.

My buddy Christopher Gooley created Whirlfood, a site that analyzes my food check-ins. It allows me to rate places I've been and shows me suggestions based on my ratings. There are also all sorts of metrics like when I usually eat (apparently I eat out at lunch a lot), my food to nightlife ratio (a lot to very little), and what days of the week I usually eat out the most. It's pretty cool. Check out my public Whrifood profile here.

Some people complain about the privacy issue that comes along with sharing your location. But really, what's the big deal? Did you know that private investigators tracked people down without Foursquare? Turns out, it's pretty easy to find people without all these new tools. And it's not like I have the mob hunting me down anyway. I don't have any enemies and no one I'm hiding from.

I think the benefits of checking into places outweigh any potential drawbacks. Soon there will be even more cool location analytics apps come out. And if you're not checking in now, you're going to miss the benefits in the future.

FlickSquare helps you post your Foursquare checkin photos to your Flickr account automatically!

Foursquare has quietly added a new feature to its website this afternoon that you won't want to miss: a new "add to my foursquare" button that can be embedded on any website.

If you own a business or publish a web page about any real-world location, this very simple button will allow visitors to your website to add going to your location as a "to-do" item and receive a push-notification to their phones whenever they check-in anywhere nearby. This small button could deliver a substantial part of the promise of Foursquare - tying together our discoveries online with our experiences offline.

The new feature was first seen and reported on by the watchdog blog AboutFoursquare and the Foursquare site has been experiencing unusual difficulties loading this afternoon. If it's struggling right now, imagine the load when these buttons are launching pop-ups for locations from web pages all around the internet. In fact, the embed code appears to be going up and down off the Foursquare site from episode to episode of uptime this afternoon.

The official announcement of the new Foursquare iPhone app and this button just went up on the Foursquare blog.

Retailers have long expected a day to come when they could push coupons out to the mobile devices of people walking by their stores. This model is much more user-friendly: push a "to-do" reminder about your location whenever a person who expressed interest online registers their off-line location near you via Foursquare.

The location-based mobile social game Foursquare has to date has held more promise for the music industry than actual results. But that’s starting to change as Foursquare and VH1 have teamed for a sweepstakes running through Oct. 10.

Foursquare users can now unlock the “VH1 Fanatic Badge” by simply “following” VH1 through a custom landing page on the Foursquare site: foursquare.com/vh1. Joining gives users access to the sweepstakes which offers the chance to win VIP access to an unlimited number of concerts from an as-yet unnamed participating venue. Signing up also provides music tips from artists like Kelly Rowland, and other artists popular on the VH1 network.

Beyond that it’s unclear exactly how VH1 plans to integrate the Foursquare location service into live events. VH1 is a media sponsor of the upcoming Lollapalooza festival in Chicago, where all stages will be check-in points. However the press release announcing the news didn’t list a single participating venue as being involved. And venues is really where the Foursquare app really shines.

Bigger news will come when popular local venues integrate Foursquare into their promotional strategies for pre-event, in-show, and post-event activities.

Despite the bungled launch and short hiatus, Twitter Places is back in action. The feature has huge implications for the geo-location space and the location-sharing movement.

Places is a big improvement on Twitter’s () previous geo-location offering, which was never widely adopted or embraced by the majority of users. Whereas before users had to adjust their settings and agree to posting every single tweet with their geo-coordinates, now Twitterers are presented with an elegant way to attach a place to their tweet, one tweet at a time.

Right now Places is a Twitter web and mobile experience only, but soon developers will integrate the Places API into their applications and services. Only then will we see Twitter Places reach its full potential. If Twitter can fix the issues crippling the service, then Places has the power to turn location-sharing into a mainstream behavior and significantly boost interest in applications like Foursquare () — not to mention the monetization potential of location-based ads.

Interesting. I agree though and don't think that Foursquare is going anywhere. A friend of mine who works over at The Viper Room (@BerkoRules) said that those little badges cost $15K/ MONTH to maintain, that they have 3 months backlog, and that they aren't accepting any new badge applications at the moment. They were looking into them I believe for the Sunset Strip Music Festival.