On the heels of announcing a major mobile push with “Places,” Facebook announced today usage numbers for its various mobile apps — namely iOS, Android and Blackberry.

A big reason Facebook Places was such a big deal in the LBS world was Facebook’s massive installed mobile user base.  To give a glimpse of that user base, Facebook indicates there are nearly 105 million active monthly iPhone users.  This is truly impressive given the fact that Apple themselves said only a few months ago that they were approaching 100 million total iOS users.  If this is true, it could indicate nearly every iPhone user is using the Facebook app, though that’s doubtful and some obvious variables exist in the figures.

While its iOS app is by far the most widely used, BlackBerry comes in second with 60M total active users using the Facebook application, which is impressive as well.  On the Android front, Facebook indicates an installed user base of roughly 12 million, which seems low, but remember the Facebook app for Android has always left a lot to be desired when compared to its iOS brethren.  With these figures, it’s no wonder why Places is only natively available in the iPhone app, though the others are coming.

The launch of Facebook Places brought LBS into the spotlight and helped existing apps start getting the attention they deserved.

We already mentioned Foursquare seeing the most new-user signups ever after Facebook’s announcement last week, and today Booyah said they’ve now reached 3.1 million total users for their MyTown location-based gaming app.  More importantly, the company said that its users check-in to the app more than 15 million times each week across both rural and metropolitan areas throughout the United States, helping it remain the largest LBS app in North America.

Over the past six month, MyTown has recorded over 400 million check-ins across the country, with the top 5 location types being restaurants, grocery stores, K-12 schools, clothing stores and gas stations.  This is interesting to note as Booyah recently introduced product check-ins to the app to allow users to scan barcodes and earn points and rewards for doing so.

For those wondering how Facebook’s recently announced Places functionality would effect other LBS apps, it was announced yesterday that Foursquare saw its most new-user signups ever — just one day after Facebook launched a similar concept.

Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley tweeted yesterday in reference to the milestone saying; “Just heard from @HarryH that today was @foursquare’s biggest day ever in terms of new user signups.”  HarryH refers to Foursquare’s engineering lead Harry Heymann.  While I assumed the launch of Places would have a positive effect on the likes of Foursquare, Gowalla and the rest, I didn’t think it would be so substantial so quickly.

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During the lead-up to Facebook’s announcement of their new check-in/location functionality, many wondered what effect it would have on other LBS startups that occupy the same market — namely Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and a host of others.

That question was answered today as Facebook announced their new API to go along with its “places” functionality.  Reps from Foursquare and Gowalla even took the stage during the announcement to talk about how they plan to leverage the new API to their advantage.  In short, Facebook made it clear that they intend to play nice with other LBS apps.

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