As Foursquare continues to gain momentum (both in users and with mainstream deals), a number of services are popping up to augment it. The latest is Pikchur, a service that already lets you share you pictures on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other services. And now they’ve added Foursquare to the mix, and built an entirely new iPhone app just for it.
SquarePik is an app that lets you check-in on Foursquare while at the same time dropping an image or video at a venue you check-in at. Because Foursquare doesn’t support media natively, SquarePik does by combining Foursquare’s check-in API with its own backend to store the pictures and record their location. Sadly, to see these pictures or videos you have to sign in to your Pikchur account (which you can do with your Foursquare credentials) on the web.
Still, it’s kind of cool that Pikchur was able to build an entirely new Foursquare iPhone app with added functionality. Some people may even prefer its look and feel as it features bigger icons and a large centrally-located check-in button. The downside is that the venue location information doesn’t seem to be as accurate as Foursquare’s actual iPhone app, and there are none of the other goodies such as seeing who else is at a venue. SquarePik also doesn’t break up check-ins by city, it just shows them all in a stream.
Pikchur is the latest service to add picture functionality on top of Foursquare. Last month, Photocheck.in started offering the same idea, but it’s slightly different in that you send a geotagged picture and it checks you in on Foursquare at the address. TweetPhoto quickly followed with an approach that is much more like Pikchur’s (but again, Pikchur’s is all about their native iPhone app).
Given Fousquare’s growth it should be no surprise that we’re seeing these new services that reside on top of it much like we did with Twitter. And while one might think Foursquare could eventually cripple these simply by adding a native photo element, that was also said about Twitter, but it never happened. That said, given that Foursquare is much more app-centric, I wouldn’t be shocked if we do see the ability to tag pictures to venues eventually.