If you’ve been reading TechCrunch this week, you’ll know (or be annoyed by repeated claims) that this year’s SXSW conference will be all about location based mobile apps. They’ve dubbed it the “location wars”. Everyone is doing and thinking about location targeting and mobile. Twitter has been doing it for months with its geolocation API and Friday went live with automatic location tagging (opt-in) on its own domain. Loopt and others in this space have been doing it for years, while Facebook and Google loom quietly. Meanwhile, usage skyrockets. Foursquare has 500,000 users and had its biggest day yesterday with over 250,000 check-ins. Anectodally, I went from being the only one of my friends using foursquare 3 months ago, to most of my extended social circle now using it (and fruitlessly competing for my mayorships — yes you Jen). But the interesting part is how mobile location apps have evolved. Based on privacy and other issues, the check-in has replaced pervasive location tracking as the catalyst for communication. It’s a clever form of opt in. Realizing this, other leaders in the mobile local space such as Loopt and Yelp have integrated check-ins in the past few months. For the local space, this is relevant because check ins revolve in some way around physical places — often a business — rather than a meaningless lat/long reading.

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