<p>Editor's note: Jonathan Barouch is the founder and CEO of location-based startup Roamz, developer of social media business product Local Measure. Follow him on Twitter @jbarouch.</p><p>Foursquare has become entrenched in the fabric of the local web, providing an API that delivers common good for developers. Any destabilization in Foursquare or its developer tools would fundamentally affect the stability of the mobile web.</p><p>Now I'm not suggesting that they are so important to the U.S. economy that Ben Bernanke and the Fed should step in to participate in Foursquare's rumored Series D. However, I do think that Keith Rabois' comment about Foursquare having a small user base firmly misses the point. Even among all the lovers and haters duking it out on Twitter, no one stopped to consider what the sheer size of Foursquare's developer base means for the industry.</p><p>Dennis Crowley said at the Mobile World Congress that 40,000 developers use Foursquare location data via their API. Let's examine the effect on Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Foodspotting and many other apps if Foursquare and its API were to no longer exist.The App Ecosystem</p><p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/29/the-internet-needs-foursquare-to-succeed/">Keep reading...</a></p>