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"Kate Imbach currently leads marketing at Skyhook Wireless, and is a co-founder and organizer for Mobile Monday Boston, Silicon Valley and Brooklyn.\nLocation-based apps and checkin features are dominating interest in mobile. In the last year, apps like Foursquare and Gowalla exploded onto the scene and are still at the center of the conversation in the tech media community. Mobile users are starting to see the value in broadcasting their current location in order to earn points, gain mayorships and meet new people.  But skeptics still ask how these apps will make money and what comes after the simple notion of a checkin.  Is the checkin a feature, or the beginning of a whole new class of mobile experiences?\nFor early users of these apps, checkins and leaderboards were novelties. Until very recently, you would check in to a venue alone, or with just a handful of other users.  Low mainstream adoption made spontaneous socializing hard within the app. Even if it persists as a behavior, the initial excitement of the checkin wears off over time.\nBut as applications like Foursquare and Gowalla gain traction beyond the early adopters,  checkin numbers are just beginning to get interesting.  Today, it is common to check into large events like conferences or baseball games with 50+ other people. These growing real-time checkin numbers are opening the door for a new set of features.  So, what happens next?\nIn 2010, we're likely to see verticals that don\u2019t typically use location-awareness, like movies, music, and sports, add checkin features to their social software.  These features will create exciting new \u201Cin-venue\u201D user experiences that will change the way we use mobile applications.   Here are a couple of examples of what might be possible.\nAt the Game\n\n\n\n\nSports applications present some of the most interesting in-venue opportunities. Imagine the next time you go to a Red Sox game, you and hundreds of other fans might check in to Fenway Park via your favorite sports app.\nBefore the game starts, you could enter an InstaFantasy game by picking three players on either roster.  During the game, the progress of your \u201Cteam\u201D is ranked against all the other InstaFantasy teams that have been picked by other fans in the ballpark that night. Between innings, the app shows a trivia question about players along with an in-game trivia leaderboard. Comment and trash talk about the game while there and connect via Facebook with other season ticket holders who you play against every night.  Using location, any sports app could add these types of in-venue features. \nAt the Movies\nMovie apps will also get in on in-venue features. Moviegoers could check in to a theater on the opening night of a film with their favorite app.  The venue could offer discounts on popcorn upon checkin, and users could vote on the movie previews shown before the feature.  While the movie is playing, they could get trivia questions from IMDB about the current movie and comment on the movie with other app users a la \u201CMystery Science Theater 3000.\u201D  The theater could award that night\u2019s trivia winner a discount on their next visit to the theater and could gather information based on answers about which type of movies each customer likes.\nWhen movie apps start adding these experiences, going to the movies will turn into a much more social and interactive experience. \nConclusion\nUsers will soon be able to interact with a whole new set of features built around the checkin, making activities around a single event that much more social and interesting.  There is a major opportunity here for apps and brands to own consumer engagement everywhere \u2014 from the couch to the stadium, from the bar to the office \u2014 and gather highly valuable targeting information about consumers. The apps that win will provide mobile experiences dedicated to every venue.\n\nFor more mobile coverage, follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook\n\nMore location resources from Mashable:\n- Are Location-Based Services All Hype?- 7 Ways Journalists Can Use Foursquare- Why Hasn\u2019t Location Reached the Mainstream Yet?- Why the Fashion Industry Loves Foursquare- 5 Real-Time Location Trends to Watch\nImages courtesy of iStockphoto, LeggNet, sweetandsour"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/06/03/the-potential-of-the-checkin/>