With the cool SXSW event taking place this week in Austin, TX, everyone who's anyone in social and social location seems to have rolled out updates this week, making your choice for how to check-in to your social media bookmarks even tougher to decide on! 

Foursquare is perhaps the Grand-daddy of social check-in and has rolled out a new mobile client this week, just in time for SXSW. The look is quite different but there's more functionality including the ability to categorize your places (handy) and add detailed address information with your places. IT still bothers me that anyone can add places and you quite often get subjected to duplicates, for example, if you want to become mayor of Joes coffee shop you could simply create a new POI called Joes Coffee and Art at the same place, check-in and become mayor... one of the pitfalls of crowd-sourcing. Browsing friends history is cool although I find this app still lacks in the ability to check-in with a photo as well - something Brightkite shines at!


Gowalla, a service that Iseem to like as muuch as if not more than foursquare has run a nice update for iPhone, now providing users with the much requested ability to add photos of their locations.... to me this feature is a no-brainer and really should be in version 1.0 of any social location check-in service! Gowalla also has some great functionality for locating your friends and connecting with them (Address book, facebook, twitter, gmail etc...)


Yelp is another check-in service coming on strong, with loads of data on POIs and also thge ability to check-in (no surprise Yelp is no longer connected with the foursquare app as it previously was). The check-in via Yelp offers loads of options where you can grab a review, see the website, add a note, add a photo and much more - very comprehensive.


WHERE - sure WHERE may be thought of as a fabulous social location widget providing loads of info at your fingertips, however, WHERE also no enables users to check-in to their social media streams (Twitter, facebook)


Tweetsii A new app rolled recently from Gypsii, enter Tweetsii. At first it appears to be a slick Twitter mobile client, however, look deeper and its much more. Tweetsii touts users to connect, create, and share and this it does, very well! Connect your Twitter account to Tweetsii and view tweets nearby, search trending topics, and locate local POIs and much more. When you pull up a place that you are visiting you can then elect to check-in. Very nice app... keep an eye on this one!

Whrrl 3 came out this week offering a cool gaming experience to users... and much more! Check In, Share Experiences, Invite Others to Join You -- Users check in to the places they go with total control over the privacy level, from completely private to public and with the ability to share to Facebook and Twitter. As always, users can add photos and notes to their check-ins to share out their experiences. Now, users can invite others to join them where they're checked in. Photos and notes from people checked in together are pooled for easy sharing.
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Boulder-based Pegshot is also rolling out an iphone update this week, reportedly with check-in for users. IT also enables users to upload photos and tags the user's location using a birds-eye imagery view which is quite clever. Take a shot, save it and share it with twitter and facebook.


Schmap didn't have an iPhone update this week (I don't think) however, for social location check-in you have to consider this app. It has all the great functionality you would want, and then some. Leveraging the data from their fabulous local guides, Schmap POI DB is feature rich and the functionality is great. Easily locate where you are, check-in and upload a photo.


iMapMyRun is a little different in that the app is for people on the go.. like running! Users can connect the app to send pings to Twitter and facebook and can even ping at set intervals. Imagine running a marathon and tweeting every mile! Quite cool although a little niche.


Brightkite - we haven't heard much from Brightkite for some time but it seems to me that all the others are striving to become what Brightkite used to be! Early to market (perhaps too early) Brightkite's functionality is perhaps the best you'll find, although I do find the latest update has moved some functionality around, most notably, making adding a photo one step further away then I would like to. Still, Brightkite is a fabulous app with terrific media sharing, great PC client, and offers terrific user history archive which most the others seem to lack. 

Loopt is another great contender, also sporting a recently updated client.
In addition to helping users discover even more local content, Loopt v2.2 also integrates more fully into the user's social map with expanded sharing through Facebook and Twitter, improves functionality around checking-in and sharing locations, and adds a host of searching options to more easily find places and events.

For more articles on social location see: