Foursquare moves beyond check-ins with Android notifications

Foursquare continues its efforts to expand "beyond the check-in," adding a new notification tray to its website and Android smartphone application.

The new notifications tray alerts users using foursquare for Android.

The notification tray alerts foursquare users when friends comment on one of their check-ins, when contacts follow one of the Tips the user left behind at a venue they visited, when friends add the same place to their respective To-Do lists, when a place you're at starts "swarming," when a Facebook friend joins foursquare and when you're ousted as Mayor of a particular site, meaning someone else has checked in there more consistently over the last 60 days.

Foursquare also adds new controls over these notifications, including a mute button to disable alerts for an hour or until the following morning. Foursquare adds it will extend the notification tray to iPhone and BlackBerry in the near future.

Last month, foursquare topped 10 million users worldwide, with check-ins at local venues now surpassing 3 million each day. Although foursquare is synonymous with user check-ins at local venues, co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai say the service is "about making the world easier to use," with an emphasis on discovering new places and connecting with friends.

Foursquare also closed a new $50 million funding round in June, with reports indicating the startup is now valued at $600 million.

For more:
- read this foursquare Blog entry

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