What I am reading:
Angel investor, Dave McClure, kicked up some dust this month with his post, “Check-Ins Are Coupons. Game Mechanics Are Bullshit.” His thesis: location based services (LBS) will have to offer real economic incentives if they ever hope to be a mainstream success. Foursquare, with some one million users, is signing up 10,000 to 20,000 new members each day— not too shabby, but it’s certainly no Facebook (try +400 million users). If you need a visual analogy, that’s the equivalent of weighing a male guinea pig (approximately 2 lbs.) against an adult grizzly bear.
McClure predicts that Foursquare, Gowalla and others will have to pony up roughly $5 to $10 per user and $50 to $100 per offline business to bulk up fast. But he’s not condemning the sector, in fact he’s quite bullish. Very bullish. McClure says the location based services market should be worth north of $20 billion and the best LBS could realize valuations of several hundred million dollars based on the potential of the market. All of a sudden, Yahoo!’s rumored $125 million offer to Foursquare sounds downright quaint. Video ahead. 
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