think job-to-be-done, people visit places, they want to share their location and update status associated with those places to their friends, and that is the job they want to get done. Ask yourself how many times you visit a place and you want your friends to know about it (let alone earning discounts or earning awards)? if you have thought about it several times which means you might have a job that you want to get done. Before LCB service, they either use workaround solutions like FB status update and Twitter (tweet sth like (@John's coffee)) to their friends / followers or simply they don't use anything at all, at the very core, LBS target non-consumers, people who know they have a job to be done, but still looking around for a solution.<p>I agree that this job is not important to everyone, some might buy it some might not, and to think about it further, I think their core priority is to give user enough motivation / incentives to use their LCB services, that's why they add Reward systems and gaming elements, in other words, give users more reasons to use their service rather than just mindlessly checking - ins, I wrote a blog post about this <a href="http://20sth.tumblr.com/post/974848197/how-to-get-users-to-use-your-product" rel="nofollow">http://20sth.tumblr.com/post/974848197/how-to-get-users-to-u...</a>