The arrival of Facebook Places hasn’t rocked Foursquare. In fact, the “one location service to rule them all” seems to have thrown some more light on Foursquare, sending floods of new users to check it out. Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley has revealed that the service has broken its record for sign ups and is being pretty bullish about the threat from Facebook Places…
In the wake of the Facebook Places launch, Crowley took to Twitter to announce that Foursquare has seen a huge surge in signups since the social network unveiled its location features: “Just heard from The @HarryH that today was @foursquare’s biggest day ever in terms of new signups #dball4life.”
That hashtag at the end is a little hat tip to Crowley’s previous startup Dodgeball which was gobbled up then shutdown by Google. Could that be a dig at that other big beast Facebook?
Though Foursquare is planning Facebook Places integration, Crowley believes it’ll also stay strong in its own right. He told Mashable that Facebook Places and Foursquare do different things: “Facebook is about sharing experiences you’ve had. Foursquare is more about the present tense and the future tense.”
Still, while Facebook Places has led new users to seek out Foursquare, there’s a big gap in size. Facebook has cruised past 500m users while Foursquare is just on the way to 3m. With other rivals like Gowalla out there to battle for users, Foursquare is going to have to fight pretty hard to avoid becoming a limpet clinging onto Facebook Places.
Are you using Foursquare, Gowalla or some other location service? Do you think the arrival of Facebook Places in the UK will lure you away from your current check-in obsession? Check-in to the comments to let us know.
Out now | £free | Foursquare (via Mashable)
