Instagram Expands the Definition of a Check-In with the Help of Foursquare

So what do you do if you are Foursquare and want to broaden your user base beyond early adopters and make your service part of the everyday behavior of more users?  You fish where the fish are – invest in your APIs, and make it easy for other services to integrate your functionality.

This is exactly what Foursquare did, and the strategy seems to be paying huge dividends in the form of Instagram.

Clearly this is a nice win for Foursquare, and one that is likely moving the check-in dial far more than some of their big brand partnerships.

But what’s going on here is something much larger.  It’s the broadening of the definition of the check-in to include things like taking a photo or using your Safeway card.

You get the picture.  By exposing their APIs, Foursquare has begun the work of mapping all sorts of activities to the check in gesture, in the process vastly broadening their insight into the real world behavior of consumers. Read more at thenextweb.com