They’re all bullshit. You read an article, get interested in one, install it, find out none of your friends or anyone nearby is using it, and uninstall it a week later.
Why have none of them thought about solving this issue that every single one of them has. MAKE IT AN EVENT! I’m not talking about picking a conference like Highlight does every year at SXSW, i’m talking about momentum behind a date. Put all your PR and Buzz around a single day, build a mass following around people installing your app, with one push notification on the day it goes live. Entice people with anything, gold, frankincense or myrrh or even pictures of cats.
But whomever manages to crack mass adoption, in a short time frame for a location based app will have the next social network, and one i’ll actually be interested in.