links for 2011-03-24

Otherwise Foursquare may never move past a location “game” and generate real revenues. We UK first movers are starting to feel neglected – there are only so many swarms we can organise on our own without Foursquare having a local presence and doing serious deals with high street brands.

Advertisers also take a different tact. Rather than worrying so much about revenues generated by traditional types of advertisement, it is viewed more as a community service, similar to sponsoring a hockey or baseball team. The associated prestige outweighs the rate of return. Besides, there are just too many other venues for more effective advertising.

The real story, in new annual figures from the Advertising Association and WARC, is the 6.9 percent rise across all ad forms in the UK in 2010, after a year or two that had seen flat to minus growth through the recession.

The idea behind Color is that a phone's location-sensing abilities can build a user's social network for them, allowing users to share photos, video and messages based simply on the people they're physically near.

I’ve assembled these 10 possible ways to bring in cash.

They are just ideas, and the most successful businesses pick’n'mix from these plus several others. If there are any glaring omissions, let me know in the comments box!

In terms of data analysis, your next big step should probably be figuring out a way to ask questions of the data. In a city budget, which category is getting the most money? Which category has the biggest change from last year? The biggest dollar/pound/other currency change? The biggest percent change?

The common thread running through all these cases suggests an unpalatable possibility: it could it be that what we’re seeing is a movement with a limited life-span rather than the emergence of a new form of grassroots journalism.