Location-based mobile social networks have grown fast, hand-in-hand with the whole mobile industry. In the last couple of days two of the major mobile social networks had interesting announcements: Foursquare marked impressively a billion check-ins last week and Gowalla introduced new mobile apps.

Foursquare Billion Check-Ins

Foursquare has been expanding rapidly all over the world and in many translated languages. Its increasing popularity also reflects in incredible benchmark of passing a billion check-ins that were recorded last week. This is another remarkable milestone statistic that joins the 10 million Foursquare users benchmark just in June.

The mobile social network noted the billion check-ins mark by releasing a heat map video, indicating the path to one billion check-ins on a world map from the prior week:

Gowalla New Mobile App

Another popular mobile social network, Gowalla, had interesting announcement– New app with many new features and updates is now live. The major (or “cornerstone” as Josh Williams from Gowalla calls it) update is the addition of Social Guides, where you can find photos, highlights, recommendations and more about locations all over the world.

Additionally, Gowalla collaborated with some major companies like Disney, National Geographic and the Austin American-Statesman for more detailed guides about many touristic places.

Location Based Social Networks Gaining Momentum

According to a report from ABI Research, over 550 million mobile users will access social networking sites this year and until 2016 the number will grown to 1.7 billion! With these kind of incredible numbers we certainly can’t ignore (as i mentioned in the past) the mobile industry while we work from home.

Mobile social networks like Foursquare and Gowalla are a great marketing opportunity to enter this market.