A Foursquare Map of the World

January 25, 2013 at 2:48 PM | by Omri | Comments (0)

Foursquare has published a map that the company says shows the last 500,000,000 check-ins on the social media service. According to travel tech blog TNooz, the data comes from just the last three months of Foursquare usage. That means Foursquare users are checking in more than 150 million times per month. Neat.

Foursquare's actually been pretty good about sharing some of the data collected by the game (does it still count as a game; it used to be a game, right?) Last summer the company unveiled a list of the most visited global landmarks according to Foursquare users. The data was a little skewed - it's not really the world's most visited landmarks, as much as the landmarks most visited by the small part of humanity that uses Foursquare - but again, it's kind of a neat to peek into tons and tons and tons of data.

As for developments on Foursquare itself, they're trying. We're already several years removed from Foursquare check-ins done from space. Once a location-based service escapes the Earth's atmosphere, it gets to call itself ubiquitous. But it's getting harder and harder to do anything new with the platform. Foursquare releasing its data is one way to continuously generate interest, as are stunts like this one where a check-in earns you dog food to give to your pet.

But Foursquare's future seems to be as a reviews and tips app - personalized recommendations" in their preferred parlance - and that's already a field occupied by everyone from Yelp to Facebook. They're coming to the game late, and they're finding the field crowded.

On the other hand, 1.5 million check-ins per month. There's got to be something they can do with that.

[Photo: Foursquare]

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