Foursquare is slowly but surely taking over the world.

Much like Twitter, its appeal is somewhat hard to describe, but more than a few folks here at Creative Asylum have been bitten by the Foursquare bug. The idea is this: members use their cellphones’ GPS capabilities to check in regularly from physical locations such as  restaurants, bars and shops. People within their network are notified of their locations, and conversations and discoveries about new places and new things ensue.

We’ve noticed two particularly newsworthy developments with Foursquare of late:

Harvard has partnered with them to create a campus-based game that rewards students with badges and points for exploring the school and surrounding places of interest. Essentially tacks an official Harvard-specific game with a special collegiate badge on the existing Foursquare functionality and purpose.

Twitter and Foursquare Become the New Loyalty Program at Tasti D-Lite - This marks the first time that a restaurant chain has tacked on social media rewards for social media exposure to their customer loyalty programs, and it’s been a long time coming.

Now if only rival Yelp wasn’t completely honing in on their turf!