ReadWriteWeb

Foursquare has released a new Web version of its Explore tab at foursquare.com/explore. The mobile version of Explore, which launched last March, is for finding stuff to see and do nearby. Today's release of Explore for the Web helps with planning interesting things to do from the desktop or iPad.

In its announcement of Explore for the Web, Foursquare says its mission is "adding an 'interesting' layer to the whole world, tailored just for you." Foursquare Explore draws on the check-ins, tips, lists and interests of your friends to put a layer of "interesting" - which is apparently a noun at Foursquare - on a map. This is a challenge to Google Places and Maps, which is racing to add "interesting", but Foursquare's 1.5 billion check-ins give it a strong position.

For a service that only exists on one platform, Instagram has been wildly successfully. The photo-sharing app for iOS is now on track to hit 15 million users, which as a post SocialFresh points out, is how many people are using Foursquare today.

Among mobile-first social services, Foursquare is arguably the biggest right now, but the geolocation check-in app is on track to be surpassed soon, despite being a year older than Instagram and being available on every major mobile platform and having a highly functional Web-based UI.

It's the end of a big week here at ReadWriteWeb. For one, we just got acquired by SAY Media. As I sit here thinking about what happened in 2011 and what's to come in 2012, I keep in mind the simple fact that soon ReadWriteWeb will be operating under a very clean look and feel in this brave new tech world. What does that have to do with 2012 predictions? Not much. Just thought I'd remind you about the state of tech news right here and now.

Which brings me to my 2012 predictions for Facebook, e-commerce, location and social networks, the four areas I've been watching closely since I joined the rad team at ReadWriteWeb this past October. Come along to the next page!

Social media is supposed to be all about engagement and authenticity, but sometimes it can feel so distributed and overwhelming that conversations get lost. A new web app called Engag.io has tackled this classic problem and offers a pretty good solution that I think you'll want to check out. It's in private alpha right now but we've got an invite code at the bottom of this post. That someone is making an app like this gives me hope that there are still great ideas that can be built on top of the most basic building blocks of the social web.

Engag.io, which gets its name from being the place for your online engagement input and output, is like an inbox for all your conversations on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Foursquare and blog comments. It's an inbox with analytics. It's built by the team behind content curation company Eqentia. Eqentia is ambitious but a little too complicated; Engag.io is very simple and the value of it will be immediately obvious to many people.

A new report from Forrester says that geosocial apps a.k.a. location-based social networks can "help increase in-store visits, your brand's visibility and consumer word of mouth by connecting people with their locations and their friends." Yet consumer adoption of location-based apps is very slow. In 2010, only 4% of U.S. online adults used geolocation apps monthly or more; that number grew to 6% in 2011. In 2010, 84% of US online adults did not know what geosocial app like Foursquare or Gowalla even were; that percentage has changed to 70% in 2011.

Foursquare recently announced that it has more than tripled its userbase in the past year. With a 50-50 split between U.S. and international users, Foursquare has established itself as king of the location-based social networks. Foursquare's announcement arrived on the same day as Gowalla's official "we're moving to Facebook!" blog post.

In June, Foursquare boasted more than 10 million users, which suggests that these last five million joined over just the past six months. Find out what caused this rapid growth after the jump.

Our friends aren't the only ones who tell us where we should go. Publications that we read online often times provide us with tips about cool places we want to check out offline. Today Foursquare announced that users read about new places online can easily add those location to their Foursquare to-do list by clicking the new "save to Foursquare" button.

The button will appear alongside location-related content on sites that have structured metadata using Facebook's OpenGraph and hCard formats. Publications such as New York Magazine, Time Out Boston, Time Out New York, Time Out Chicago and CBS have already started using this new Foursquare feature.

If you think whipping out your phone, searching for a venue and then tapping the "Check In" button on Foursquare is a tiresome waste of several seconds, you're in luck. Like so many other things in life, the Foursquare check-in promises to be simplified by NFC technology, allowing us to simply wave our phones to automatically check into a venue.

Of course, mainstream adoption of NFC is at least a few years away, but owners of Symbian-powered phones can get started thanks to a new update to the Foursquare app for the platform.

Today two Greek entrepreneurs launched a new iPhone app called 4sqwifi, which uses the Foursquare API to find locations nearby that offer free WiFi, along with the WiFi's passwords. The app gathers nearby venues, searching for keywords like "wifi" or "password," and then displays only those venues. There are also a small percentage of false-positive tips that might pop up, like "password for men's toilet." But if you can deal with (read: laugh, man!) this margin of error, then you'll enjoy this app. To use the 4sqwifi app, you must have a Foursquare username. If you've resisted using Foursquare for some time, this might just be the app that changes your mind.

Even though Black Friday might be happening on Thanksgiving Day after dinner, there is obviously still an offline component to the whole ordeal. Location-based check-in service Foursquare, released an infographic on its blog yesterday that includes tips for finding deals. Users who are looking for an additional option can try Poorsquare, an app that uses Foursquare data to surface nearby locations where you can score free stuff.