A New Tool to Help Businesses Check Out Who's Checking In Geotoko helps businesses reach customers of every check-in app persuasion.

Your customers are on the go, and nowadays their whereabouts are your business. Mobile location applications, aka check-in apps or geosocial media apps, help friends find who's hanging out where. But the apps, including Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places and Google Latitude, are also powerful tools that allow businesses to connect with customers and craft special deals tied to social media interactions.

The challenge? Figuring out which check-in apps customers are using. Though Foursquare emerged as the early app of choice, it's still too early in the geosocial media game to favor one and ignore the rest. That could leave businesses in the unfortunate position of having to spend time and resources developing separate marketing campaigns for each of the check-in apps, and then trying to track the effectiveness of each one separately.

Enter Geotoko, a marketing tool that helps businesses find out who has checked in at their locations. The company was founded by a group of friends attending the 2010 SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. They recognized what the surging appeal of the location apps could do for merchants who had an analytical grip on the check-in activity on their premises.