While their dual at SXSW in Austin earlier this month shifted much of the location-based social app focus onto rivals Foursquare and Gowalla, Booyah has announced that MyTown has just hit 1.5 million users.

That's up from the 1 million mark the app hit in February – itself a figure that represented impressive growth at the time, MyTown having only topped 500,000 users the previous month.

Leading the pack

By comparison, TechCrunch reports that Foursquare recently hit 600,000 users, the app trailing MyTown by some degree, but having the advantage of being available overseas.

Almost as if to celebrate, Booyah has also released the latest update for the app - MyTown 3.0 hitting the App Store just two months after MyTown 2.0 made its debut.

Upgrades aplenty

"We have completely overhauled our social features in MyTown 3.0 to make the game even more engaging," the firm says on its blog.

"With the inclusion of a friends list and messaging platform, you can send and receive messages from friends as well as gift in-game items."

Topping off the upgrades is the ability for users to restore their account by registering with Booyah.

In the event that they switch devices or have to perform a system restore, users will now be able to recover all their data and continue gameplay where they left off.

[source: Booyah]