Great News!.  Foursquare has finally come to the Blackberry.  

The new app works with Research In Motion’s BlackBerry 8000 and 9000 series and has the basic functions as the app for the iPhone – users can see where friends are and check in at different locations, allowing for “virtual badges.” But it doesn’t yet have all the features of Foursquare’s social network, such as allowing users to add new friends.

“From a core-functionality perspective, the app for BlackBerry is equal, but for those side features, for now you still have to go to foursquare via the mobile web,” says Foursquare cofounder Naveen Selvadurai.

Foursquare’s app comes as location-based apps are becoming more popular.

But Foursquare’s Mr. Selvadurai says that other location-based apps are not necessarily competitors. “We’re sticking very closely with our thesis which is, how can we make our city easy to use? How can you share data better with your friends? We’re still building towards that, but at the same time, I don’t think anyone is really there yet.”

Tristan Walker, the head of business development for Foursquare, estimates current Foursquare app users to be around a quarter of a million. He says the company hopes to make money by working with “local mom and pop shops” as well as mid-sized retailers. For instance, he said, Tasti D-Lite recently launched a Loyalty Program on Foursquare, through which customers can earn and redeem points by tweeting or checking in on Foursquare while stopping by the ice cream chain.

But the company is not yet profitable. “We’re still at a point where we’re getting feedback,” he said. “Right now we have over 500 venues on board with our platform, so we think there may be value we can extract from that by giving them sophisticated analytics.”

The company launched on the iPhone in March 2009 and then expanded to Google’s Android platform and Palm Pre devices. In September, the company received $1.35 million dollars from Union Square Ventures, which has also invested in Boxee, Tumblr, and Twitter.