Last year when I was leading communications at Howcast, I lamented to Jason (I **just** code) Liszka, an engineer at foursquare, that his company could sneeze and get covered by 5 notable blogs. Albeit, that was after a long day and a few alcoholic beverages, but this question about foursquare’s success with getting media attention, mostly without a PR agency, is something that excites many startup founders and simultaneously frustrates and confounds many PR professionals.

After working in-house at a startup (Howcast) and for two PR agencies (Metia and Articulate), I’ve probably worked on behalf of nearly 20 companies doing PR and influencer relations from seed-funded entities to some of the largest global companies. By spending time in the NYC tech scene, I’ve also seen so many brilliant ideas, products, and people in the startup world, yet a miniscule fraction actually get attention, and many for negative reasons.

So why do I care about foursquare? Because there’s a lot we (PR, marketing, and tech founders) can learn from its success.

Check out my answer to why Foursquare got so much media attention and press coverage:

How much impact did Foursquare’s PR firm have on its press coverage?

Short answer: none, since they only hired an agency in November 2010. Longer answer is that this is the wrong question to ask (yes, I know, I still answered it). My opinion is that we should ask (and answer) this one: how much did press coverage drive user adoption for Foursquare?

Tell me: am I off base? What’d I miss? I’d love to hear your take.