Foursquare says it grew 3,400% in 2010
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Foursquare grew 3,400% last year, the location-based social networking service said of itself on Monday.
The small, but increasingly popular, company made the announcement in a blog post with an infographic, stating: ‘Honestly, 2010 was just insane. The numbers tell the story better than we can, so we put together this little infographic. (Also, our 6,000,000th user signed up last week!)’
According to Foursquare’s graphic (which can be seen below), 381,576,305 check-ins took place last year worldwide. The last country to check-in in 2010 was North Korea.
Users can check-in to a location or event on Foursquare, using smart phone apps or online, to earn badges showing where they’ve been or what they’ve done. If a user has checked in more times than anyone else over the last two months, that person becomes the ‘mayor’ of that location or event.
Many have questioned what the point of such location-based services might be, while others use it as a way to see what their friends are doing and where, or even meet people who frequent the places they do. Either way, it seems a lot of people took to the service in 2010. As of December 2010, the company had 5,000,000 users.
The largest number of people who used the service to check in to an event was 30,525 Foursquare users at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity in D.C. back on Oct. 30. Those who did check in at the event were awarded a special Foursquare badge that shows up online and in a user’s Foursquare app user profile.
There was also one check-in from space, from the International Space Station, on Oct. 22.
The most popular categories for check-ins were food, work/office and shops.
The Hollywood Bowl was the second-most checked-in music venue last year, topped only by Terminal 5 in New York City. California was the top state for gym check-ins, with such check-ins accounting for 2.48% of all check-ins in 2010.
And -- displaying a sense of humor -- Foursquare noted that 224 people named Wendy checked into Wendy’s restaurants last year and that one was even the mayor of a Wendy’s in Madison, Wis.
Foursquare was launched by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas, in March 2009.
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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles