Singlesquare turns Foursquare into location-based dating service

Foursquare lets you win virtual mayorships, but what about winning people's hearts? A new iPhone app called Singlesquare builds a location-based dating service on top of Foursquare's check-in technology.

The app, which is free, came out this week. It's based around 'sightings' of single people in public venues, like bars and clubs. You can post a sighting of someone else, or add yourself to a specific location as a singleton looking for love. Well, that or a drunken snog. Whether you're spotting or self-promoting, you can add photos.

You can browse a list of nearby venues to see how many single people are there -- or rather how many single people using Singlesquare are there, which will no doubt be a different story. If you find someone who sounds interesting, you can send them messages -- 'pickup lines' as they're known in this app -- and then take things from there.

Singlesquare is just the latest iPhone app to use Foursquare's basic check-in system for its own purposes. Other notable examples are foursqWAR and Mayor War, which turn Foursquare into a war game; Beerby, which involves reviewing the beer you drink wherever you check in; SuperGlued, which offers a music and gig-visiting spin; and Spotisquare, which ties Spotify playlists to Foursquare locations.

But Singlesquare is part of a bigger trend too: location-based dating services. Apps for the iPhone include StreetSpark, MeetMoi Now and Skout, not to mention the more earthy charms of Grindr.

The problem with all of these apps, however, is that they're useless unless plenty of other people are using them in your town or city, or indeed village. Nobody wants to be the only location-based dater in the village.