First-World Countries Love Foursquare

Foursquare is touting it’s popularity today and with good reason. The social check-in service saw an estimated 3,400% growth in 2010. Not too shabby.

However, one of the most glaring issues that comes to mind when viewing the incredible infographic published by Foursquare (embedded below) is not the crazy rise in users…it’s WHO is using the service.

As you can see, first-world countries are the primary users of the service and Internet in general. It’s really quite staggering.

To get a better idea about who is actually using the Internet, take a look at this diagram of World Internet Usage Stats with a breakdown by region, percent of population of world, and then overall percentage and growth rates.

• North America is only 5% of the world although 68% is online
• Asia is 56% of the World 10% is online (but the largest amount of internet users anywhere)
• Latin America is 8% of the world, but has 14% online
• Europe is 12% of the world with 36% online.
• The growth column shows Africa, Middle East, Latin America to explode in internet usage over the last 5 years

There are a lot more stats out there but I sincerely want to know if you think third-world countries will be able to get access (like first world coutnries do) at any time during our lifetime. What do you think? Will it happen?

I’m working on a long-form feature about just this topic and would love your $.02. Thanks in advance! (Contact me via the comments, @edudemic on Twitter, or on the Facebook Fan Page)

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