Checking In

After Yelp launched Check-Ins about a month ago, and speculation that Facebook is working on a system for mobile check-ins, it was interesting to see Foursquare's response - signing a content deal with Zagat.

I'm still a bit baffled by how Foursquare can be a viable business. The concept of checking-in is imminently copy-able (clearly), and both Yelp and Facebook have much stronger user bases (I think Foursquare just passed 100,000 users, while Facebook reportedly has 100,000,000 mobile users).

Jason Calicanis, founder of Mark Cuban-backed Mahalo (noted in my previous post), had an interesting post that regarding the launch of Google Buzz that I thought was relevant.

He think Facebook has built almost all of its best features by copying others that moved before it. What will happen now that Google has essentially copied (and perhaps improved upon) Facebook's best feature?