The social web is growing at such a fantastic rate that even Mashable can’t keep up with all the new developments. And the place where it’s growing the fastest is right in my pocket.

As of last night, there are over 2900 different social networking applications – just for the iPhone! And in the queue are thousands more – from augmented reality apps to healthcare-information apps. In short, it seems that there’s a massive land grab for us mobile consumers.

Small business FTW

I used to think that the future of the mobile consumer market was largely owned by companies like iTunes, Verizon and Pepsi. But now I think it’ll be owned by places like In A Pickle, the breakfast place around the corner from my house.

Three smart dudes and a chick

For the past few weeks I’ve been playing a site @joewaters pointed out to me called foursquare started by Dennis Crowley,
Naveen Selvadurai,  Harry Heymann and Mari Sheibley. Briefly, foursquare is a cross between Twitter, Yelp and Milton Bradley’s Monopoly. It allows you to make real-time connections with other folks [Twitter] who rate their visits to local restaurants, retailers and other local businesses [Yelp]. You also get kudos in return for “good consumer behavior”. For example, if you have the most visits to a coffee shop, you become “The Mayor” [Monopoly].

Is this thing on?

Every time I’d ping foursquare when I visited Panera Bread or Starbucks (which gets posted on Twitter) I received no offline response from these businesses. Not even a “thanks for stopping by”. But I wasn’t surprised. Foursquare is new and someone has to make the doughnuts. I thought, “How can these businesses using foursquare to get closer to their customers?”

And when I became the Mayor of Panera Bread in Watertown, I half jokingly asked, “where’s my effin’ bagel, Panera Bread?!”

In A Pickle, on the other hand thanked me for my Yelp review 26 minutes after I posted it!

Guess where I’ll be Mayor next?