Foursquare’s days are numbered…

I have said it once and I will say it again, Foursquare will not survive this year (yes, 2010). I know that anyone who loves Foursquare will completely disagree with me and they would probably be smart to do so given that there are only a couple of months left this year. However, beyond the outage that the blogger I am linking to below speaks about: 

• Remember Facebook Places?  Turns out that Facebook was granted a fairly broad patent covering Location-Based Social Networks And Checkins .  The announcement today means that they could effectively shut down Foursquare, GoWalla, and others that are in this space.
• Foursquare is still tiny.  As of the end of August they had reached 3 million users.  Even if we assume they have now grown to 4 million users, which I doubt, they are less than 1% of the size of Facebook.
• Foursquare still does not have its services business in order.  From personal experience I can tell you that as recently as September 27th I requested a Foursquare Special for CityCamp Boston, deciding to try to give Foursquare a shot for this event.  As of now (8+ days later) I can tell you I have not heard a single word (email, phone call, smoke signal, or carrier pigeon) from Foursquare.

Take my advice.  If you are not yet on Foursquare, don’t bother.