Foursquare Clamps Down on Mainstream: Adding 15,000 Users Per Day
Look out, because here they come! Foursquare, the ever-growing location-based social network is quickly digging its clamps into the mainstream as CEO Dennis Crowley reveled that the community is adding about 15,000 users per day. The announcement was made at this Business Insider’s Startup 2010 event in New York City this morning.
Foursquare first made it’s major debut at the SXSW 2009 Music, Film & Interactive Festival last year in Austin, where it was dubbed “the next Twitter.” With such a gracious title, the location-based network has exploded, recently surpassing the one million user mark, and now adding a substantial amount of new users a day.
Addressing the crowd this morning, Crowley said he very excited to provide a violable platform that businesses can utilize, offering “Google Analytics but for local merchants.” For example, allowing a small cafe to see its demographics and identify its most influential customers. These are powerful statistics that businesses can leverage to turn visits into meaningful data, very useful for future business strategy, as well as gathering consumer insights.
Foursquare has struck a number of recent media partnerships that have helped propel the community into the limelight. It’s recently announced deal with Starbucks, where Mayors of each location will receive a $1.00 off a drink is just the tipping point of what they have achieved so far. Bravo, Zagat, MTV, The Wall Street Journal, History Channel, and a number of other deals have been struck that have sent this new type of community channel soaring above its competition.
It’s main competitor, Gowalla, has not seen the kind of numbers it thought it would when it had it’s showdown with Foursquare at SXSW this past March. Both spurred a major amount of buzz, however, Foursquare seems to the be the clear winner so far.
Compete.com reports that more than 2 million + unique visitors a month are now heading to Foursquare, as opposed to just a little more than 500,000 for Gowalla. And this doesn’t account for it’s sole use in the mobile space, imaginably much more active.
Foursquare vs. Gowalla
Despite Foursquare’s dominance, Crowley believes competition in the location space will expand, and for Foursquare to carve its niche, he said he needs to provide a unique experience, as opposed to what larger sites could end up doing.
