I don’t think it’s fair to think that there needs to be one service to rule them all — use what works for you depending on what you are doing. For example, I’d never post to Twitter via the Gowalla app (too clunky), you can’t post a photo to Twitter from foursquare like Brightkite does. I can’t get directions from any of them and a mapping app can’t tell me what bar is popular tonight.

A lot of the current appeal is the newness and the small number of people we mutually know who are out there “founding” new spots. I imagine regional favorites will quickly take hold and locally we’ll have a favorite based on who the majority of people in our social circles have migrated to. Your favorite app might not have even been released yet. Who knows?

I’m seriously researching the Droid.

Daniel, I should have known you are a closet Waffle House rowdy. LoL!

As for uses and benefits of geolocation apps, other then making your stalkers job easier, they can be helpful for social events. Every year a group of friends and I do a pub crawl on St. Paddy’s day, so as we go from one pub to the next I check in at each location and anyone that wants to catch up with us knows where to find us. So, look for us this March if you want to grab a Paddy’s day pint.

I will say, after getting hooked on Gowalla, I’m starting to come around to Foursquare. Even though I like the look and feel and polish of Gowalla, I think the game aspect of Foursquare is a bit more fun. I think Gowalla needs to develop theirs a bit more to make it more interactive. I do think they are working on this, so I will probably continue to use both services until I see their next moves.

And sadly, I have pretty much stopped using Brightkite, which I used steadily for almost two years. The time they spent offline after the glitch with their site, along with these newer services have pushed Brightkite to the 4th screen of my iPod. They were the ones who introduced me to geolocation fun though, so I will always respect them for that.