This occured to me today as I was walking our dog. Gowalla and foursquare are essentially built on the habit of dogs. Now this may seem a little far, but those with dogs understand this immediately. When you walk your dog, the dog goes sniffing around (as unattractive as it may sound) for other dogs’ urine. This is their way of marking their territory or if you may, “checking in”.

The only difference is that they do it out of nature and not for the badges/pins. Nevertheless, I think in all its lack of academic studies to back it up, is a great discovery :)

The question remains though, are there many other behavioral acts that us humans could build web services on? I’m sure there are, we just haven’t discovered them yet.

By the way, you can find me in Gowalla.