By Mikal E. Belicove|For Entrepreneur.com|May 17, 2011

Just when you thought American’s love affair with their mobile phones couldn’t get any closer. A recent study shows that an increasing number of mobile-device users — a.k.a. would-be customers — are taking advantage of geosocial and location-based check-in services such as Facebook Places, Gowalla and Foursquare.

One in five smartphone users currently use location-based “check-in” services on their phones, representing 16.7 million U.S. mobile subscribers, or about 7 percent of the nation’s total mobile phone population, according to a recent study from comScore, a Reston, Va., audience measurement service.

That’s quite a jump from the piddling 4 percent figure announced after the results of a Pew Research Center survey were released just last November. But for small business owners who’ve been looking to geolocation services to put them on the map in front of new customers, that growing propensity for check-ins is certainly welcome.

The comScore study found that 16.7 million mobile phone subscribers accessed…

Continue reading Location-Based Check-Ins on the Rise with Consumers