The one certainty about the struggle between the major location-based social apps – Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, MyTown and PlacePop to name a few – is that some will undoubtedly fall by the wayside.

No one wants to check into locations by logging to multiple apps.

Brightkite, however, appears keen to link-up with its rivals, ensuring users who aren't sure of which app to back can tap into the service - even if they favour one of its competitors.

Reaching out to rivals

Brightkite's co-founder Martin May has suggested the company is working on utilising its rivals' respective APIs to create one check-in system that will log users movements on Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla at the same time.

The admission was made in a response to a question posed on ReadWriteWeb.

The request for "a multi-check-in service... that would allow me to check into all three" met with a reply from May that stated Brightkite is already "working on exactly that".

New in town

At the moment, it's difficult to say who's winning in the location-based app sector.

Both Foursquare and MyTown claim to be attracting 100,000 new users every week, while Brightkite is believed to have more than 2 million users worldwide.

Gowalla, too, is enjoying growth, having recently launched an Android beta app that's set to expand its audience beyond iPhone.

However, it will be interesting to see how its rivals react. Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley has reportedly already told ReadWriteWeb that the move is news to him and Gowalla's API currently only available in read-only form.

[source: ReadWriteWeb]