Foursquare Is Becoming Relevant Again

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Foursquare announced that it now has 45 million registered users. The announcement did not say how many of those users are active each month.

Back in September, the app had 40 million registered users.

More interestingly, Foursquare touts the fact that it has surpassed 5 billion check-ins.

Foursquare is one of the more compelling social apps on the market from a big data perspective. Not only does it have a lot of hard location-based data in the form of check-ins, it's also now collecting large swaths of passive location data on its users.

According to Digiday, Foursquare briefed ad executives recently on its new initiative to track the location of users' phones, without requiring them to check-in. The app is able to do this by taking advantage of the "Background App Refresh" feature on iOS7 devices. On Android devices, Foursquare is pinging smartphones "every few minutes" to determine a user's location.

In addition to announcing these updated usage figures, Foursquare said that it had raised $35 million in new funding. (Foursquare Blog)

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In Other News …

POTENTIAL UPSIDE FOR TWITTER: Twitter's revenue per user is approximately half of what Facebook's is and one-third of what LinkedIn's is. Analyst Ian Maude uses that as evidence that Twitter has headroom for monetization growth. (Ian Maude)

WHATSAPP PULLS AWAY FROM THE COMPETITION: WhatsApp announced that it has surpassed 400 million monthly active users. The app added 100 million active users in the last four months alone. BI Intelligence published a chart this morning showing the historical user growth of WhatsApp compared to other popular messaging apps. (WhatsApp)

MOBILE DEVELOPERS LIKE FACEBOOK: In a survey released yesterday, mobile app development platform Appcelerator found that 66% of developers said they connect their mobile apps to Facebook. Twitter was at a distant second at 53%. (Appcelerator)

INSTAGRAM ADS: The first ad campaigns to run on Instagram appear to have been a huge success. Levi's reached 7.4 million people in the U.S. during a nine-day period, while Ben & Jerry's reached 9.8 million people in the U.S. during an eight-day period. (Instagram Blog)

LINKEDIN IN CHINA: Ad Age looks at the complicated social media ecosystem in China and why LinkedIn is struggling to gain a foothold in the relatively untapped, but massive market. (Ad Age)

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