On the web, small, seemingly insignificant things can have incredibly wide-reaching effects. A small ad placed next to a search result might be the start of a massive new enterprise. A service that lets you share your status, photos and links with others might become the largest social network on earth. Small changes. Big results.
And one day, people might say something similar about location service Foursquare and Location Layers – a feature that lets Foursquare ‘layer’ information from certain brands on top of certain venues. Check-in at a Starbucks and get some local news. Check-in at an underground bar and get a bit of trivia as to who was once there. Small change. But with possibly very big effects.
Maybe now we can see why Yahoo wanted to buy location-based check-in service Foursquare last April - it's sinking its teeth deeper into the geolocation arena. The search engine and content aggregator announced this morning the release of Yahoo PlaceFinder, an expansion of their mapping and location capabilities that take aim in the direction of check-in services like Foursquare and Gowalla and other location features like Twitter Places.
