It’s official: the International Olympic Committee now has a Foursquare page, adding a badge to go with its aggressively trademark-protected rings. It’s picked up an impressive 14,500 followers in just a few hours, proving that even the tradition-bound dinosaurs at the IOC can eventually come around to the social+mobile+local draw of an international sporting event. There’s hope for other similarly skeptical organizations.

An interesting new piece of research came our way late yesterday from Porter Novelli looking at the social networking of European consumers. The research points to a few important distinctions that can be made from the individuals within the online crowd, namely that women predominantly use social networks to make and maintain personal connections while men Tweet, post, update their networks with opinion and to display status updates. There’s also an important distinction to be made around brand loyalty.

For some, their local barista is a lifeline into a busy day, and when a big tip and a beaming ‘thank you’ just isn’t enough, there’s new iPhone app We&Co.

With 500,000 merchants on their books, Foursquare has been offering its users daily deals for some time. But without taking a cut from these, and with a focus on growth rather than – gasp – monetization, the app – which recently passed the 10 million user mark – has been bereft of meaningful revenue. Until now.

Earlier this week, geo-based social networking site Foursquare announced it surpassed 500,000 merchants. That’s over half a million businesses reaching out to the mobile-savvy generation, gleaning valuable market research and raising awareness of their brand. But this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s top dog in the mobile/social commerce sector.

Where has all the happiness in the world gone? We’re not too sure, but one place we’d suggest you look is on the Foursquare network, which just announced it’s surpassed 10 million users. In a blog post, Foursquare provides a black-on-white infographic that reveals some of the less banal check-in events (new babies vs., say, the OMG! Starbucks Frappuccino’s) and this little tidbit: Foursquare users are a pretty damn cheery lot.

It’s not sporty of us (or anyone) to pick on MySpace, but it’s worth putting its spectacular decline into perspective. And we do so here in a new chart that makes us wonder: will MySpace be around in another six months?

The NFL continues its blitz on building up its non-American fan base in a geeky way, this time teaming with Foursquare to create a virtual Super Bowl party for the big game on Sunday early Monday morning.

Good news, Dodgeball Google Latitude fans. After a quiet stretch when we thought Google might just give up on Latitude, the longest running of all geo-location check-in services (if you count its past as Dodgeball), the search king has announced it’s not dead, but instead will be recast as a mobile app that works with Google Maps.

It’s not easy to pick out ten things expected to take off in the coming year, let alone 100. But that’s just what JWT’s team of futurists put together in this buzzy slide presentation.