A Check-In Each Second. Last Friday, the location-based service Foursquare announced that it was opening their service to be used anywhere in the world. The following day, they saw the biggest day in terms of usage ever, apparently. This past Saturday, Foursquare was averaging more than a check-in a second, according to this tweet from the official account. Some quick math tells me that this means they must have seen over 86,000 check-ins in that 24 hour span. While Foursquare hasn’t publicly stated how many users they have, our best guess is that the number is something around 200,000 (with many following Scoble) and growing fast. And while that would make Foursquare much smaller than Twitter (which, in turn, is much smaller than Facebook), it makes the check-in numbers even more impressive. That data would seem to indicate that a good number of Foursquare users are actively using it.
The latest version of Foursquare’s iPhone app, version 1.5, went live in the App Store today. 11 Ideas for New4square Features. .Eureka Earthquake cashmore TwitterPics. A strong earthquake (magnitude 6.5) hit Northern California today, breaking windows and taking out power lines in some areas. The quake hit at 4:27 pm PT, with the epicenter around 25 miles from Eureka. Being a Saturday with most of the news media not at work, it was left to Twitter to tell the story, with users posting pics to photo site Twitpic almost immediately. Here are the most retweeted Twitpics from the incident, all of them from @amyeureka — her full Twitter feed paints a picture of the damage more detailed than any news outlet has achieved. Got more Twitpics of Eureka earthquake damage? Add links to them in the comments! .6Foursquare Apps We'd Love to See. Foursquare is one of the crucial new social networks to keep tabs on, and for entrepreneur types, the recent release of its open API is big news.
It may be time for developers to start shifting away from Twitter and start tinkering with something a bit more Square. Here are 6 Foursquare apps we'd like to see developed. What other location-based apps would you like to see take advantage of the Foursquare API? Let us know in the comments. 1. When you check in at a restaurant on Foursquare, you can see what feedback your friends and others have left. 2. Building on the aforementioned menu idea, how about being able to order food from your smartphone, using Foursquare as the backdrop? 3. Not all our friends are on Foursquare, and many of yours probably aren't either. 4. We don't generally sit around tapping refresh on our phone to see where everyone's at on Foursquare. 5. Teens and party-going twenty-somethings have plenty of disposable income to make this app worthwhile. 6. Conclusion. .Harvard Teams Up With Foursquare.
It's hip to be square. Foursquare, that is. The esteemed academic institution Harvard has partnered with Foursquare to create a campus-based game that rewards students with badges and points for exploring the school and surrounding places of interest. The news hails from the Harvard Gazette, which describes a partnership that essentially tacks an official Harvard-specific game with a special collegiate badge on the existing Foursquare functionality and purpose.
The primary idea behind the collaboration is to encourage students to connect more with friends and professors through location-based game play, as well as to inspire campus visitors to explore the grounds and uncover tips or share to-dos. If you think about it, tapping into the hyper-local university scene is brilliant. For another look at a university getting creative with Foursquare, check out what UNC Charlotte is playing with. [img credit: Stephanie Mitchell, Harvard Staff Photographer]