The fact is Foursquare may have only 16 employees but it’s certainly something to take note of. The location-based social network tool that allows you to ‘check-in’ from your mobile device is putting small businesses on the map and is likely to be another ‘Twitter’ in terms of popularity.

To give you some idea of the way that Foursquare is coming up through the ranks be aware that during this year’s SXSW festival (the interactive film and media festival) in Austin, Texas it was used over 1,000,000 times by people ‘checking-in’ to different events.  Observations that I have made regarding the rise of Foursquare as a social media tool to take note of is that just last week Foursquare was featured on “The Today Show” on CNN and it also has it’s own category alongside Facebook and Twitter on the knowledgeable Mashable blog.

Foursquare are now working with small businesses to understand how they can help them more.  A dashboard has been provided with analytics to understand how many visitors businesses have per day, the most active time of day, who their most frequent visitors are and a gender breakdown. This type of information can help with retaining customers and gaining new ones. Loyalty discounts and specials can be used to encourage frequent visitors who provide small business with free advertising over their twitter and facebook profiles as their ‘check-ins’ are broadcast.

To learn more about Foursquare’s business visit the Foursquare + business page.