I was incredulous asked the other day why I still used Foursquare – as if it was some passing fade and I somehow missed the exit sign.  In fact, I’ve remained a pretty religious user of Foursquare.  According to Vizualistics I check-in about 70 times a month. While I do like seeing the service evolve, the primary reason I continue to use Foursquare is for the digital bread crumbs it allows me to leave. I believe an increasing number of services will rely on our digital footprint as I wrote about yesterday. By creating a digital record of places I’ve been I have hope I’ll be able to provide my future self with strong recommendations for any number of things I might be interested in at that point.

Check-in services like Foursquare and Gowalla have grown significantly in the last year. In March 2010, Foursquare hit 500K users and in the last few weeks they had surpassed 5M users.      

Building off this momentum, other services have entered the check-in fray like WeReward (pays you to check into places), GetGlue (Entertainment), Miso (TV), Philo (TV)  and of course even Facebook entered the LBS mix with Facebook Places.  

Device aspects like integrated GPS, larger screens, improved OS, and better connectivity began to reach critical mass over the last two years – making LBS technically more feasible.  But it was arguably the gaming aspects of the LBS offerings that provided early motivation – enough to finally jump-start a category. Gaming does well in the mobile environment naturally because it fills voids created by boredom. Besting a friend to become mayor of your favorite restaurant or capturing badges provided just the right level of gaming to fill small amounts of time and boredom.