Face off: Survey shows Foursquare is losing out to Facebook Places

Facebook Places seems to be going places fast and has powered past start-up location-based discounters Foursquare and Gowalla to achieve a commanding market share in the five short months since its stateside launch.

The Financial Times' tech blog has reported that 32 per cent of social networking site MerchantCircle's 1.6 million local business owning users currently promote their business through Facebook Places, while just 9 per cent use location-based start-up Foursquare - even though Facebook Places is said to be largely styled on the start-up.