Zhephree

Foursquare (the service) has come a long way. The service has almost 2 million users, is available in every country, on every major mobile OS, have over 100,000,000 total check-ins, and are adding over 10,000 new users every day. They’ve partnered with dozens of mainstream corporate sponsors and tourism centers. And they show no sign of stopping.

Foursquare for webOS has come a long way, too. The app entered into the official App Catalog just after midnight on January 1st, 2010 as the 999th app in the catalog. It was buggy, but it did the job. In the almost 8 months the app has existed, it has gone from 0.6 to 1.5 and has had a multitude of visual changes and features added, many features which aren’t available in other foursquare clients. The app has been rated by PC Magazine in the 10 Best webOS apps, and the users have selected it as one of the top 5 webOS social networking apps on PreCentral. 

So, I’d like to share some interesting stats about the app.

• As of yesterday, the official app has had over 40,000 downloads.
• Its rating in the catalog has increased by 0.2 in just a week (Now a 3.6, the highest it’s been)
• Since the launch of v1.5, we’ve had over 6,000 downloads
• We used to average 178 downloads per day (as of July 18), but are currently averaging 470 per day.
• Almost half (48%) of users use the app every day
• The most popular users of the app are English speaking Americans on Sprint using a Pre, with Germany in a distant second place.
• Assuming all 40,000 downloads are active users, webOS users account for approximately 2.2% of all foursquare users. In February, we accounted for 1%.

Now, I know those raw numbers aren’t astounding, especially because there are webOS apps out there with three times as many total downloads, but considering this is a niche app for an up-and-coming social networking service, I think it’s pretty good. And what’s probably more important than the total numbers is the rate of growth the app (and the service) have seen in less than a year. The fact that in the last week our total downloads per day almost quadrupled, I’d say we’re growing pretty well.

Obviously there are improvements the app can have, but v1.5 is the first version I’ve felt 100% comfortable with in a while. 

I’m all about transparency, and this post is a step toward that. I’d appreciate it if you haven’t rated and/or reviewed the app in the official App Catalog, please do! The higher the rating, the more exposure it gets and the more exposure it gets, the more inclined I am to work harder on it and the more likely new apps will come from me (one of which is in development).

So, thanks so much for supporting the app! The insane amount of feedback I’ve received via e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, and my forum on PreCentral has been amazing and has been a huge reason many bugs have been fixed and features have been added. If I did an inventory, I’d be willing to bet only about 50% of all items in the app’s changelog were thought of or discovered by me. You guys probably chimed in with the rest.

So, thanks again, guys! Keep the feedback coming.