Curated by Alex Kessinger

Just as Google Maps and similar apps have led to the commoditization of map technology, we’ll see check-in data eventually becoming a commodity as more and more such services arise and a couple of the big social network companies step in with open check-in platforms.

Future location-based startups won’t need to license their own global place listing data and build the technology to take a location fix and convert that in some fashion to a check-in. They’ll simply wire up to an API provided by Facebook, Twitter, Google or another platform provider to access that information. Such platforms are already starting to emerge, in fact, with Google’s and Facebook’s “Places” offerings.