"If you look at the Forrester studies for Twitter three years ago, it’s like, “This isn’t interesting. There’s 1 percent of people tweeting what they had for lunch.” I’m sure they nailed their research story, but it didn’t turn out to be true."

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Crowley nails a point that consistently frustrates me and for which Twitter is the best example. Every year, most especially around this time of year when folks are forecasting what has happened and what will happen in the year ahead, we look at usage numbers rather than broader technology and adoption trends to suggest what is ‘dead’ or what is launching. Then the forecast is consistently revised to save face and link bait.

If at the core of an application there is useful information presented in a sufficiently differentiated way, the trend will continue and the implementation will evolve to suite the need. Location-based information certainly falls into that category.

via Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley talks of check-ins