MyTown social gaming app blows past Foursquare, Gowalla

My Town, a relatively new social gaming app for iPhone, encourages users to check into real-world locations to level up, unlock achievements and earn cash to buy their favorite real-world places. The app is similar to other check-in apps -- e.g. Foursquare and Gowalla -- but has a few more game-like components.

That formula seems to be working. MyTown launched a mere two months ago, and has already managed to blow away the 'it' check-in app with more than 2x the users -- 825K registered users (who spend an average of 60 minutes playing per week) compared to Foursquare, which launched a year ago and is reported to have 300K users. Gowalla also launched about a year ago and has approx. 100K users. Take that!

Game developer Booyah recently rolled out a 2.0 update with some major graphic design changes, a virtual store where you can buy power ups and other extras, such as a Godzilla-style monster (look closely at the image to the right) that stomps around your virtual city.

In the next few weeks, MyTown 3.0 will arrive with a higher level cap, social gifting. the ability to, say, send your monster to stomp around your friends' towns for a while, says Booyah's David Wang. There might also be sponsored mini-games added into the mix, though there are no concrete details on that at the moment.