The issue with this is that it rewards users for generating pageviews instead of taking an action.

In the real world, when someone checks in at a business, odds are they are buying something, creating that virtuous feedback loop.

The only way to make this really pay off for website owners is to tie it in deeply with a more robust rewards system, but that requires fairly custom integration...which gives me an idea!

If you could build something like MixPanel meets Foursquare (i.e. develop a JS API that makes it incredibly easy for developers to build a rewards system) that would be a big win for everyone.