Happy birthday, foursquare.

It was exactly a year ago when Naveen and I flipped the switch on foursquare.  It was the day before we headed down to SXSW - back when we were still feeling 50/50 on whether people would think the “let’s turn real life into a game!” idea was really interesting or whether they’d laugh us out of Austin.

We took separate flights.  I remember walking down the tarmac into the plane still on my laptop fixing the database.  Naveen landed in Austin and texted me something along the lines of “its still alive!”.  We made it though the weekend with a bunch of hiccups but nothing disastrous (special thx to friends in NYC who were keeping an eye on the melting database).

And so here we are one year later.  It’s amazing how far we’ve come…

Over 500,000 users 
Over 1,000,000 badges have been awarded
Over 1.4 million venues with 1200 offering specials
Over 15.5 million checkins

… and last Friday we had our biggest day ever, weighing in at 275,000 checkins over the course of the day.

And here we are again.  I’m about to get on a flight out of JFK.  Naveen’s about to get on one out of Newark.  We’re now at 16 employees (!!) and a whole foursquare entourage is flying down tomorrow.  And I feel much better about the server being up and running when we land  :)

I can’t tell you how psyched we are to see you all again in Austin this weekend.  It’s been an amazing year and thanks to everyone who’s pitched in to help and support us along the way. We’ve got a lot planned and we owe you all a beer (or a temporary tattoo or ten).

See you in Austin,

-team foursquare

ps:  Party on Monday (w/ Brizzly & Katalyst).  8pm @ Cedar Street Tavern.  The best way to skip the line?  Be wearing some foursquare tattoos :)