Foursquare Hits 2 Billion Check-ins, 20 Million Users

It’s April 16th … otherwise known in some circles as Foursquare Day. (Get it? 16 is four squared. And April is the fourth month of the year.)

In honor of its own unofficial holiday, Foursquare has confirmed the latest numbers related to its continuing growth:

• more than two billion check-ins
• more than 20 million users
• more than 35 million places in its location database

After a period of what I’d call fairly slow development over the last year or so, the company has rolled out several features in recent months that have turned Foursquare into much more than a friendly game of points and badges.

The biggest development was the completion of Foursquare “Explore” on the company’s website (it was previously available on mobile), which effectively made Foursquare the web’s newest local search engine.

With now more than two billion check-ins, Fourquare has a lot of behavioral data that it can mine to improve local recommendations — not to mention a lot of long-tail keywords and text in the Tips that users associate with businesses. It also beat both Google Places and Yelp by recently adding restaurant menus to its business listings.

The Foursquare crew around the world made this video to celebrate Foursquare Day today.