Foursquare announced that they're building on the successful partnership they've had with American Express for several years. Foursquare users can now check in to participating businesses and activate a discount with Mastercard, VISA and debit cards as well as American Express. Foursquare users "simply sync their card to their Foursquare account, check in, and pay."

The new feature is initially available at over 6,500 Burger King restaurants across the U.S. Foursquare users should open their mobile app and sync up their card, then check in and use the app to pay the next time they're in a Burger King or other participating business.

Foursquare announced today that they have released a new app just for business owners. Like Facebook's Pages, the app allows businesses to log in and manage their venues. The app supports multiple venues, and even allows the business to post status updates and respond to tips or comments as that business.

The Foursquare for Business app also allows business owners to post and manage their specials. If you aren't already using specials through Foursquare, use this opportunity to try one right away. Foursquare specials accomplish two things:

For local small businesses, one of the keys to search engine marketing is making sure that if a customer is searching for your business, they can find it easily. This means making sure that your business has a regional listing in each of the major search engine's local directory, like Google+ Local or Bing Local. Customers are also using apps and social networks like Foursquare and Yelp to find, rate and review local businesses.

LinkedIn announced today that the professional social network has passed 200 million members. It's a tremendous milestone and the announcement went on to break down how that membership is comprised.

For instance, the site boasts 74 million members in the United Sates, and 11 million in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, India has actually surpassed the UK for second place at 18 million members.

LinkedIn is gaining approximately 2 new members every second, and a great many of those are coming from countries like Turkey, Brazil and even China.

From an industry perspective, Information Technology (IT) represents the largest segment at 4 million members, followed by Financial Services, Higher Education, Computer Software and Telecommunication.

Foursquare has made a change to their service that blurs the lines between your Foursquare connections and your Facebook or Twitter connections. This update was announced in a Foursquare blog post over the weekend.

Has your business opened or started a new location recently? Foursquare has released an update for the iPhone which allows users to see businesses that have opened recently nearby. Simply tap on Explore and you'll see the Recently Opened button. 

Foursquare, the location-based social network that lets you check in to businesses, has released an update to their app and overall service. They have implemented a unique Foursquare scoring system that ranks businesses in an effort to show you how popular a business is. According to their blog and the update:

With this update, we've made finding the best place even easier.

Now when you're searching for somewhere to go in Explore, you'll see a score next to the name of a place. It's our way to give you a quick sense of how much people love it.

The social networks Klout, Foursquare and Yelp all released minor updates to their mobile apps. 

Klout for iPhone

Version 1.6

This update includes: