Location and mobile marketing are buzzwords marketers love splashing about, and one of the longest players in the field is Foursquare.

Neither as big as Facebook nor slick as rival Yelp, Foursquare has nontheless continued to innovate for an evolving market.

Here are some reasons to give Foursquare another look.

40 million

Foursquare has over 40 million global users, who have so far clocked up 3.5 billion check-ins.

There are 1.3 million Foursquare business pages, while 100,000 have run specials through partners such as AmEx.

Travel and coffee

Foursquare users like to coffee and travel, and telling people about it. The most popular check-in location is Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which has logged over 1 million check-ins.

The most popular brand page on Foursquare is Starbucks, with 1.4 million likes.

Discounts

Discounts and coupons are by far the most popular reason people check-in (54 per cent for early adopters).

Next on the list comes meeting friends, to learn about a location and to promote a location.

All brands big and small

Bigger is sometimes better when it comes to check-ins, with users more likely to interact with large brands ahead of small businesses when it comes to location apps.

However it's not all bad news – users are almost twice as likely to share interactions with small businesses with their friends via social networks (37 per cent for national brands compared to 63 per cent for small businesses.)

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