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If you're an early adopter, you've not doubt heard of (and probably even use) mobile "check-in" applications. Popular location-based services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Whrrl, TriOut, Loopt and others are all the rage these days, even earning magazine cover stories about the so-called "check-in wars," as different companies fight to win this space the way Facebook won the desktop.

But after spending a few weeks "checking in" at every venue, bar, restaurant or club you visit, the excitement wears off and a question comes to mind: "why am I doing this?" you may ask yourself. The rewards are, in most cases, minimal: a point, a badge, a meaningless "mayorship" that's soon stolen away and the occasional mobile coupon. Do any of these things make check-ins worthwhile?

What would? A new service called Topguest may have the answer.

As the market for location-based services continues to grow, it's becoming increasingly important for these companies to have access to correct location data. Placecast helps developers ensure that their location databases are accurate. The service also allows developers to exchange data with other services that might have slightly different data sets. After looking at the data sets of its 200 customers, Placecast found that the average fault rate for the location data sets is about 8%. Location databases that include a high proportion of user-generated content, however, had fault rates that were often as high as 40%.

New from IZEA, the company that wants to monetize everything from blog posts to tweets, is WeReward, a mobile social networking application that promises to pay you for checking in to local businesses via your mobile phone. Launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt, the startup already supports 15 million U.S. businesses and has Domino's Pizza as a sponsor.

Is this the winning model for location-based social networking? Or are the payouts too small to make it worth the hassle?

Yahoo announced last night it has acquired Koprol, an Indonesian mobile location-based service. With Koprol, which launched last year, users are able to see where their friends are and what they're doing in real-time. Like Foursquare here in the U.S., Koprol lets people check in when they arrive at a particular location and then share tips, reviews, photos or other messages with nearby users.

The current crop of location-based social networks mostly focus on getting users to check in and share tips about local venues like restaurants, stores and coffee shops. DeHood, which officially launched earlier today, wants to bring a bit more value to its users by going beyond check-ins. The new location-based social network wants to bring a local community closer together by giving its users the ability to share news and information about deals at local shops and restaurants.

Yesterday we looked at Check.in, the universal check-in Web application that provides a single interface for registering your location with several location-based social networking services like Foursquare and Brightkite. Today, we're learning of a native iPhone application that integrates Check.in's functionality: Geolorean.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been using Check.in, the browser-based "check in" application that registers your current location with a variety of location-based social networking applications, including Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Whrrl and TriOut. The app was cooked up by the Brightkite team in an effort to simplify the process of using multiple services such as these, an ongoing frustration among LBS (location-based-services) early adopters.

So how did it fare? Not bad at all, if I do say so myself.

The current crop of location-sharing services like Foursquare and Gowalla rely on very basic game mechanics to entice their users to check in at their favorite bars, restaurants and coffee shops. Just checking in, however, really isn't that exciting in the long run. SCVNGR, which got a major investment from Google Ventures earlier this year, is taking check-ins to the next level by adding additional game-like challenges to virtually every one of the 20 million places in its database. For now, SCVNGR is only available in the U.S., but the company plans to expand internationally soon.

A Redmond-based startup is introducing a location-based social sharing service called Glympse. With a mobile application that works on iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile devices, users share their location (aka a "Glympse"), allowing their friends to see that location on another phone or on any other Internet-connected device. Senders can customize who gets to see the Glympse they post, whether the recipient is just one person, a group, or even everyone they've added as a friend on a social network like Facebook or Twitter.

The interesting twist to this service isn't the location-sharing aspect, of course - there are dozens of companies that allow for that today - it's the service's real-time nature and the thoughtfully included privacy features. Using a patent-pending timer option, Glympse users specify how long their location is visible to which select group of friends, with a maximum time of four hours before the location data expires.

Rally Up, a new location-based social network with a strong focus on privacy, just became the first fully featured location-based social network with an iPad app. The app, which is available for free (iTunes link), includes all of the features of Rally Up's iPhone app. Thanks to making good use of the iPad's expanded screen estate, however, using the iPad app is far easier and a lot more fun.