Applications for the popular foursquare platform are exploding onto the market. Foursquare, which allows users to create and visit virtual venues the way Farmville allows users to create farms, enabling users to visit each other’s “venues” and “check-in”. Venues can be virtual representations of businesses, places, causes or concepts. Similar to the way Facebook users form groups to display their likes and dislikes Foursquare users traffic the virtual venues they like.  

Within the foursquare platform users can attach music to a venue using a free program called Spotisquare while using a program called Spotify to play the music attached to the venue. If live music is what your into SuperGlued uses your geo location to find shows to attend, get tickets and find out what people at the show are saying about it, in real time. For the budget wise there is an application called FourCash that allows users to track what they spent, with who and where. The Foursquare apps emerging are not only for your smart phone. Users with iPads can use fun with apps like Dash Four, a map based application that shows iPad users where their friends are in a more comprehensive way. A particularly interesting app called Layar shows users the most frequented venues in their local area and which users are frequenting these venues. Another app called Gatsby will help you find people where you’ve checked-in who share similar interests as you and text you both to suggest an introduction. 

With all the social networking programs out there keeping them straight can get a bit hairy. A foursquare application called Hotlist simultaneously checks users in at foursquare venues keeping their locations current on Twitter and BrightKite while generating a unified map showing where contacts from each program are. The program also can provide directions to meet up with a friend at another venue. This Foursquare app also allows users to rate venues using a hotness scale. And speaking of what’s hot, the app Where Do You Go goes a step further by visually displaying users foursquare check-ins as a heat map. 

Right now the pool of apps enhancing your foursquare experience is not as overwhelming as the vast ocean of apps available for the iPhone; But as more and more people check-in to Foursquare it’s a safe to say that in terms of apps and optimization the best is yet to come