According to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project ^[1], 55 percent of smartphone owners use their devices for some sort of location services. But before you rush to proclaim this the Era of Foursquare, keep this in mind: the study’s definition of “location services” is pretty loose, says ReadWriteWeb’s John Paul Titlow.

Indeed, respondents to the study reported actions such as mapping directions or receiving location-based recommendation to their phones as location services. All told, 23 percent of American adults use location services on their phones or on social media sites on their computers. Further, only about 12 percent of those smartphone owners reported using check-in services like Facebook Places, Gowalla, or Foursquare.

What does all this mean? Well, although use of location-based services is growing quickly, texting (92 percent), MMS (80 percent) and email (76 percent) still dominate smartphone.

Read more at ReadWriteWeb ^[2].