Smartphone number of the day: 185 million

The spread of smartphones and the real-time social web are pushing the importance of the moment, right now, toward infinity and reducing the importance of distance to zero. Where you are, in real-time, is what matters. Not how far away from Person/Place/Thing X. No one is capitalizing on this trend better than Foursquare.

Four months ago they had a total of 40 million user check-ins. Now, it's already grown to 185 million. One of my smartphone business models is: think locally scale globally. Foursquare is rapidly utilizing the crowd to build out a global database of local businesses, physical locations and people.

Another smartphone business model is: boring is death. Foursquare's users can interact, in real-time, with their surroundings, with friends and strangers, earn points and leverage an integrated virtual-physical information layer. Rather than sitting there, quietly.

I expect the service to continue to grow rapidly.