Foursquare Spreads Out A Bit: Now Lets You Mention Friends On Facebook Who Don’t Use The Service

With the recent Foursquare changes, it’s becoming very clear that the service is trying to spread its wings into the mainstream population. It’s about discovery and exploration now, not just check-ins.

Today, Foursquare wanted to let everyone know that you can check-in with a friend, even if they’re not using Foursquare. This is important because the service has been around for a while and risks its userbase leveling out and becoming stagnant. Perhaps if you mention a friend not on the service, they might just sign up.

Here’s what the company said on its blog:

With Monday’s iOS update, you can now mention Facebook friends who aren’t on Foursquare in your check-ins. Just tap the add friend icon when you’re checking in and scroll down to find them. Your friends will get a notification on Facebook, and will be tagged in the Facebook post if you choose to share it there.

This is pretty huge because when it comes to Facebook, notifications are everything. When I use Facebook, it’s because people are dragging me to content, willingly, that I didn’t know about. It could be a picture, status update, gift or a check-in. Also, this is important because Foursquare is basically saying to Facebook “That whole check-in thing you did? Didn’t work.”

While investors may struggle to find the value in Foursquare’s long-term, I’ve stated before that the company is setting itself up for serious competition and success. By leveraging all of the data that we’ve pumped into the service over the years, it now has a fantastic platform to build on top of and monetize for advertisers and partners.

Much like Instagram just unleashed its web platform with all of your photos, Foursquare is unleashing features that are actually helpful. You can’t do this from scratch; empty profiles and venues suck. This does not. Long live the new Foursquare.

[Photo credit: Flickr]