Vodafone to get gamers checking-in with Foursquare

Ever gone to a café, bar, or sleazy strip joint and wished you were the owner? It's a concept not lost on the makers of the scores of 'location-based social apps' currently flooding a smartphone near you.

Titles like MyTown, Gowalla. and Foursquare (amongst numerous others) have managed to turn visiting places in your area into a game all of its own.

Players are able to 'check-in' whenever they pop into the locations listed on the apps' respective databases, visiting more often than anyone else giving you ownership of the venue - figuratively speaking, anyway.

There are badges to collect, reviews to write, and accolades to win, all leading to gameplay that feels part 'gotta catch 'em all' Pokemon, part Yellow Pages.

Though gamers have already been signing up in their droves, a deal between Vodafone and Foursquare revealed today could lead to the app appearing on a whole lot more handsets in the coming months.

According to an announcement made by the two parties, Foursquare will now be promoted on Vodafone's MyWeb and Live! Portals. Users will also be sent a link to the service's WAP edition if they text FOURSQUARE to 97886.

At a base level, this tie-in doesn't offer anything beyond increased exposure for the app - Vodafone users in the know are perfectly capable of navigating to Foursquare's mobile site via their browser - but it does represent an attempt to get more players onboard.

Vodafone is currently the UK's second largest carrier, making any such deal worth its weight in gold to a new title.

It also promises to make gameplay on Foursquare a whole lot more competitive. Though more than 100,000 new users have been signing up to the service every week, most are in the US, some venues in the UK far from overwhelmed by check-ins.

So while Foursquare is likely to gain an edge over its rivals thanks to the Vodafone deal, anyone who found it easy to become the king of many a castle on these isles could soon come up against a whole lot more competition in the weeks ahead. The game is on.