Right now user metrics are being held side-by-side to show that Facebook Places is outstripping Foursquare by a dramatic margin: 30 million pairs of feet for Facebook vs only 4 million dipping into Foursquare. So the question arose, does this mean that Foursquare is doomed?

Probably not, says an article posted at Business Insider,

But the idea that Facebook Places has lots of users who don’t use it much feels right. Lots of people we know use Facebook mobile – Facebook says 50 million iPhone owners do – and we hardly every see check-ins in our News Feed. Certainly the number is far lower than the number of mobile upload photos we see.

While Facebook does have sheer dominance in users, it looks like Places suffers from a sort of “lots of people sit there on it, but they don’t use it very much.” The margin between total users between Facebook and Foursquare may look staggering in aggregate; but the actual usage statistics (as calculated for three locations in New York) plant Foursquare several heads-and-shoulders above Facebook in every instance. In some cases Foursquare use exceeded Facebook by 400%!

So, why are we seeing this disparity?

I am guessing it’s a case of mass-vs-interest. A lot of Facebook apps will include a Places function, but if most of the mass is only using the Facebook app to be Facebook, then they won’t even look at Places. Foursquare, on the flipside of the phone, runs apps that don’t just integrate location-based usage but center around it. As a result, users running a Foursquare app are doing so because they want the location ping.

Sure, this does mean that Foursquare can breathe a sigh of relief that they aren’t being crushed outright by Facebook out the gate—but the social network giant still has the advantage of sheer size and momentum, all they need to do is really start pushing location-based services through their own network and they’ll prove that they have a lot more weight to deliver with.

Foursquare, on the other hand, will currently look a lot shinier to advertisers, which will keep them in the game, and as long as they continue to grow their network they’ll be able to hold their own. Here’s a video from SXSW, where we had an early look at the LBS wars.