Whether it would be fair to brand Facebook Places a Google Buzz style flop is unclear – Facebook is yet to declare any specific usage statistics for the location-based offshoot, which launched midway through 2010.

What's clear, however, is that the leading independent location-based apps have continued to grow over the course of the last 12 months regardless of the social network's intrusion.

It's a genre wide expansion highlighted by the release of new statistics from Foursquare, which now claims to have 6 million members around the globe.

Square number

Most impressively, however, is that 1 million of those signs ups were made within the last month and a half alone.

The firm only passed the 5 million milestone at the start of December.

Said users appear to be checking in with relish, too, with total check ins for 2010 topping 381.5 million check ins in what Foursquare claims is every single country on the globe – including North Korea and, in a somewhat token but no doubly symbolic effort, the International Space Station.

As Foursquare only rolled out in 2009, 2010 was naturally a record year for the network, highlighted by a 3,400 percent rise in check-ins when compared with the previous year.

At last count – all the way back in August 2010 – Foursquare's nearest competitor MyTown had 3.1 million members on board.

[source: Foursquare]