Check-Ins are Coupons. Game Mechanics are Bullshit. (opens in new tab)

Dude, I know it feels like you are writing is brilliant when you are high on coke, but believe me it is just a bunch of incomprehensible drivel.

Dave's writing usually rubs me the wrong way, but this piece makes a ton of sense. Facebook has shown that they can execute well as the market changes so I suspect they will try to buy something, but will not pay the valuations most VCs expect.

Those are some awfully strong opinions.

And, makes http://foursquare.grader.com look kind of silly. Oh well, at least I had a good time with it and you just never know.

when we started our location based site launching soon :), we researched current and future competitors: key points we came out with: 1. Facebook absolutely will launch a friend finder (although they'll have privacy problems and they'll have to be careful) so most friend finders will get crushed. 2. most current sites are confusing- don't actually understand what they do within 10 to 30 seconds of looking at the site. Often they do too much that people care minimally about 3. Most location based sites have missed out on some very basic needs that people have. Many seem to be built by hard geeks for other hard geeks. Go out and talk to mainstream users, they just are like wtf? So dave has said what most people may have thought but were not willing to say because of what i think of as the 'twitter' effect'. Its the 'well, it could be another twitter, just that i don't get it yet' thought.

However, the one advantage foursquare etc have got over some poor muppet like me with my $6,000 dollar savings invested in our idea is lots of money and an existing infrastructure. That said, these days, its amazing what you can do with $6,000.

Foursquare's game mechanics do get old, and they really haven't done much to change them since launch. I started playing Foursquare in March '09, was sick of the badges a month or two later, and haven't cared to check in much since.

Granted, I know plenty of people who still play Foursquare religiously, but I suspect they'll burn out on the gameplay too eventually. It's very hard to keep a game engaging over multiple years. I have nothing against Foursquare, I just hope they have some plans to mix things up.

Lately, a number of my friends who are non-early adopters started signing up for Foursquare. Do they check-in? No.

I bet the only reason they signed up was because of the coverage by the mainstream media which picked up the hype from blogs like Techcrunch (or more specifically MG Siegler).

His prediction about Google buying Twitter and Yelp to take on Facebook made me laugh. Until he said they will "probably still [lose] due to no clue on social"

Totally agree, Facebook will win location war hands down.

Pretty interesting predictions, very thought provoking at least.