Facebook purchased location-based service provider Gowalla with plans to move away from displaying a time-based feed of your friends’ recent check-ins, and focus instead on creating Stories around the places you and your friends have visited.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations around location-based services and the acquisition online.

Gowalla vs. Foursquare mentions

Gowalla, which had not been generating significant buzz this month, spiked above Foursquare mentions following the acquisition speculation last week and confirmation today.

Will the acquisition help Facebook conquer the location-based market that it failed to do with Places?

Location-based mobile service SCVNGR will be automatically preloaded on certain Virgin Mobile handsets beginning later this month, thanks to a new partnership announced Tuesday. The announcement comes after last month’s partnership with restaurant chain Buffalo Wild Wings, which has more than 700 locations in the U.S. SCVNGR also recently launched a multi-city promotion for the Nissan Juke and before that, executed a New Year’s Eve program with American Eagle and a Black Friday-themed promotion with Coca-Cola.

Have all of the new partnerships helped increase SCVNGR’s buzz? We used Social Radar to run analysis on location-based mobile service chatter.

SCVNGR vs. Foursquare vs. Gowalla vs. Facebook Places

Chatter around SCVNGR has been miniscule compared to location-based powerhouse Foursquare, which had 200,000 users check into its experimental Super Bowl Sunday location. The chart looks a bit like Foursquare is flipping its competitors the bird.

After Facebook launched Places in 2010, many speculated about the future of location-based check-in service Foursquare. But the company announced staggering growth stats today — Foursquare has now hit 6 million registered users, grew 3400% in terms of check-ins and saw a total of 381,576,305 check-ins in 2010.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations around Foursquare.

Foursquare sentiment

Conversations around Foursquare over the past few days have been astoundingly positive.

Foursquare vs. Facebook Places vs. Gowalla chatter

Foursquare generated significantly more chatter than both Facebook Places and Gowalla over the past few months.

Which, if any, location-based check-in application do you use?

Yesterday Facebook introduced Places, a new feature enabling users to share where they are with their friends, allow them to see who is near them, and allow them to discover new places around them. Though Facebook is enabling location-based services Foursquare, Gowalla, Booyah and Yelp to integrate with Places, many have speculated that Places will lead to the death of these other services.

We used Social Radar to conduct some preliminary analysis on Foursquare vs. Facebook Places.

The chart below shows Foursquare gaining steady increase in chatter over the past year.

But Facebook Places chatter eclipsed Foursquare in less than a day.

Overall buzz around Facebook Places has been slightly negative, with words like ripoff, risk and privacy concern appearing among negative words.

A closer look at the topic cloud around Facebook Places reveals some of the relevant topics of conversation and their sentiment.

So far today, the word Places is appearing in more than 30% of posts related to Foursquare.

Will the trend continue and will Places completely infiltrate all Foursquare conversation and subsequently take users? Or will privacy concerns with Facebook Places keep people using Foursquare and other services where they can limit their friends? As more users begin integrating Facebook Places into their lives, we’ll check back with an update.