Beyond Foursquare: The future of geolocation apps and websites
From the early days of geolocation, with Platial kicking off the geolocation revolution in the practically prehistoric year of 2005, a number of paradigm-shifting startups have already come, gone or been sold, among them fwix, Loopt, Ditto, Blockboard, Everyblock (shut down this month) and the late lamentedNextStop and Whrrl.
On last Sunday, Josh Williams, former founder and CEO of Gowalla and now a product manager at Facebook, penned a great writeup on the early years of the Foursquare-Gowalla death match, spanning 2009-2010, before Foursquare emerged as the King of Check-In Mountain.
Now that the table has been set, what's next for geolocation? Is it all about Foursquare,Yelp, yawn and go home?
I don't think so. Instead, we're seeing geolocation begin to splinter into niches and verticals. And, within a couple of years, geolocation capabilities will simply be baked into our everyday on-the-go lives.
From Silicon Valley and elsewhere, startups have emerged w
