Opening a keynote at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley announced that Foursquare is now translated into five new languages: Spanish, French, German, Italian and Japanese.
Crowley also shared the latest stats from Foursquare: 6.5 million users, 2 million checkins per day, 420,000,000 checkins altogether, and 3400% growth during 2010.
Explaining the concept of Foursquare to the auditorium, Crowley emphasized the importance of the gaming element, which makes the service "almost like a game in the real world."
"Badges drive people go out and have new types of experiences," said Crowley. "The gym rat badge is hard to get, but users are changing their real-world behavior to get the badge (...) we're rewarding people for doing things in the physical world," said Crowley.