So I just wrote this article for the New York Observer’s new site NYFI about an interesting iPhone app called Foursquare. If you haven’t heard of it already, Foursquare—developed by Dennis Crowley of Dodgeball fame—uses your phone plus GPS to turn your social life into a videogame. But Dennis has bigger aspirations for it:

If Foursquare goes the way Crowley hopes it will (that is, if you all join), your everyday activities—from your commute to your grocery-shopping—would unlock what he calls “contextually relevant information”: tips, tricks and thoughts sourced directly from people you know. It would “make people more aware of the cities they live in,” and “motivate you to do things you wouldn’t normally do,” Crowley said. If Foursquare succeeds—if it’s adopted by enough people—it would fundamentally change the way many people interact with the city. It might well make today’s guidebooks, weekly event listings, and reviews look like the early versions of Mapquest by comparison.

The question, of course is: now that the app’s been live for three months, does it actually have a shot at doing this? Or will it just become “that nightlife game” played by the New York Media cool kids.

Read it. There might be an answer at the end.