Foursquare adds five more languages to the mix
Back in February of this year location-based social service Foursquare added Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese and French. As of September 1st, they continue their quest for world domination, expanding their offering by supporting five new languages. This next round of in-language support for iPhone, Android and Blackberry includes Bahasa Indonesian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Thai.
Foursquare was probably one of the fastest growing location-based communities when they hit the ground running and they continue to lead the front with an intent to capture check-ins from any country in the world that has a smart phone user base and a data connection. Before this update, Foursquare already had over ten million active users checking in globally and now with these new language additions they've opened the floodgates to almost over 1.5 billion new customers that can now use Foursquare in their own native tongue.
It will be interesting to monitor Foursquare's language expansion patterns as they add more and more languages in the near future. In the United States, location-based campaigns and marketing initiatives wrapped around events like South by Southwest and the International CES show, as well as small local businesses, are hugely popular. The big brand marketing assault is already capitalizing on location-based marketing in America in a big way. It'll be interesting to see how the concept for business translates when used more heavily within other economic structures and cultures across the globe. Will it go big or go home or not go anywhere at all?
Judging by the mere few months it took for them to come out with the next round of languages, my guess is the potential is huge and Foursquare knows it. I would love to see a complete data set of activity from them for these other languages in three to six months!
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