Much has been written about the value of a check-in. From the TechCrunch article begging FourSquare and GoWalla to “stop pretending this is fun” to one author’s query, “Why the hell would I do that?“, it’s pretty popular to slam location-based services (LBS) as being a valueless fad. One author defended these companies on four bases: Getting rewards, capturing travels, receiving recommendations, and playing fun games.

But the truth is that none of these is really right. The value isn’t there for the masses to declare their location to the world – yet. The user gets nothing from checking in on FourSquare, GoWalla, or Whrrl, and games like MyTown, which focus on the game rather than the network/discounts, just don’t have the stickyness to keep users coming back day-after-day for months on end.

Looking at the MomentFeed article’s four reasons LBS apps will succeed is depressing: the rewards require long-term commitments which are often too grand to suck in the average, non-techie user; capturing and sharing travels is fun when you go to a new city, but loses its luster quickly; recommendations can be found in much more detail through Yelp or other review sites; and the games have a finite level of entertainment – they simply aren’t that fun.

So is LBS simply a fad, that will go the way of the snap bracelet and Tickle-Me Elmo? No. I see location-based services diverging into two large, profitable sectors: large-scale social games, like Parallel Kingdom or the new concept that came out of Startup Weekend, The Hitchery, in which you transport other people’s virtual hitchhikers around the world; and companies that provide direct, immediate value for consumers at businesses around the country. An example of a company that is headed in this direction would be SCVNGR, which currently straddles the line between the two categories by offering immediate rewards for individual and social tasks; another seems to be ShopKick, which offers “Rewards for simply walking into stores.”

This latter category – rewards for checking in, right here, right now – leaves a great deal of room for subsets. For example, imagine that, once GPS technology is more precise, people will be able to check into trade show booths on their phones. Better yet, what if a parent could check into a restaurant to let their child know where they are in case of an emergency – and that same child could check in when they go out with friends, to put the parent’s mind at ease – and earn points that can be exchanged for rewards (this is being done by a product called TouchBase). Perhaps closer to my heart is the idea of an immediate reward being something other than tangible – say, checking in to skip the wait at a restaurant or night club.

Regardless of the reward, it’s clear that the winners of location-based services are going to be the consumers, as the software companies continue to build and the stores continue to try new things to court their customers’ dollars. In the meantime, what should those of us with smartphones do about the question, “Which check-in app do I use?” The answer, for now, seems to be, “Check back later.”