I have been playing with Foursquare mostly, basically since it launched in 2009 and shortly thereafter I started using Gowalla too. Yes, there are a lot more out there and even Facebook jumped in the game, but these are the two really gaining traction. For a while there I was dinking around with Loopt and Google Latitude along with a lot of other people, but they never translated to real life.

The real question everyone has been asking is; “What does a location based service do for me?“

The short term answer has been; you get stuff from businesses you check in to. I haven’t gotten anything…have you? In fact I know people that got really into LBS for a season until the fun wore off and they had nothing tangible to show for it… so they quit.

Here’s what I think the future of location based services will be and why it will be a sustainable industry.

All of the interconnectivity happening via social media will hit the ground through location based services.

LBS will be the platform to which consumers will establish relationships with businesses. Currently you have little to no relationship with the people at your grocery store. Sure some of us have the benefit of a smaller local store where we can, but the reality is that the vast majority of us don’t. The businesses are too big and too many people come in and out every day.

With LBS you will be able to have a dialog with business owners and operators and because they can clearly see how loyal you are they can weigh your voice accordingly and reply in kind and even hook you up with ‘friend’ deals. The will be able to shape their business around their loyal customers in a more personal way.

It may be a few more years away, but hey, how many times did you have to visit and how much money did you you have to spend at that local shop before they considered you a loyal customer worthy of hooking up?

Time will tell.

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• Location Based App Ethics

I have become a fan of the location based app trend that is just beginning to gain some traction and is well on its way from being in the early adopter stage to mainstream. Go see Brent for a breakdown of a few.

Since there is some sort of competitive element that goes with them and more and more businesses that are rewarding users, I think it’s time we started a discussion about ethics.

Here are my proposals:

Don’t check in where you live
It never occurred to me to check in at home, but then I saw some people doing it. I don’t have a particular reason why you shouldn’t, other than the fact it’s dumb.

Don’t check in where you work
As businesses begin to offer rewards to the ‘leading’ users, it only makes sense. How can a restaurant offer a discount or special offer when the leading user on a given app is a waiter at the restaurant?

Connect with people in real life
Connect with the people who frequent the same spots as you, that’s the point of the whole thing isn’t it?

What other points need to be considered?

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• The future of location based services