Foursquare surpasses 10 million members

It's still the brand best associated with the check-in, and its community doubled in six months

foursquare announced Monday that it now has over 10 million members, double the size of its community from six months ago.

Co-founder Dennis Crowley revealed back in December that the community had five million members and was seeing two million check-ins per day. No word now on the exact number of daily check-ins, though Crowley says it’s “growing.”

To commemorate its latest milestone, foursquare created a cool infographic that shows the company’s weed-like growth over the past couple years, along with some other neat statistics. For example, some of the most popular chains users check into are Old Navy, Bank of America, 7-Eleven, Home Depot and Target.

Not one to sit still, foursquare has continued developing out its platform, in tandem with its membership growth.

The most prominent example of this for consumers was the launch of Foursquare 3.0 in March, at the start of SXSW 2011. That new app introduced discovery features, revamped game mechanics and a completely new loyalty program that gives businesses more leverage in rewarding its best customers.

For developers, the new version of foursquare’s API (v2) has been available since December. Starting August 1, though, the company will drop all support for version one, meaning developers don’t have too much time left to move their applications over.

Besides all that, foursquare has been moving right along in other ways that cement its position as one of the brands best associated with location check-ins.

Most recently, mobile phone manufacturer INQ selected the service to be deeply integrated in its Cloud Touch device, an Android smartphone designed specifically for social media usage. Originally, the device was going to be all about Facebook, with the News Feed on the home page and contacts synchronized from social network to phone. Yet, in spite of Facebook Places, INQ chose to add Foursquare support so users can use that for checking in.

Still, it’s mid-2011, and much of the data says that smartphone users aren’t really checking in all that much. Whether that will continue to change as smartphone continue to proliferate remains to be seen.