Facebook Places Increases Foursquare Signups: For how long?

Once Facebook announced Places – its new location service – we had assumed that Foursquare would feel the impact right away. However, in a strange twist, users have been increasing and even broke its signup record.

Facebook Places cannot only be used via the mobile website, but also with an iPhone app as well, which Maddy discussed in a recent article. Foursquare should not get too complacent over this recent surge in signups; they are only approaching 3 million users, whereas Facebook has now passed the 50 million mark.

Benn Parr from Mashable, notes that Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley tweeted yesterday that his company is able to hold their own against Facebook for now, but he agrees that this could have been due to the fact that users were curious and wished to compare the two services.

Foursquare is not safe just yet, and is under no illusions that this upward trend will continue, the true test is to come once media and public interest dies down. Although Facebook places and Foursquare are based on the same principle, the services offer different things, and the latter hopes that this will help keep them in the running.

Foursquare or Facebook: which do you use?