The hackathon heard round the world!

This weekend, we were totally blown away. Our round-the-clock, round-the-world global hackathon spanned 48 hours and 6 continents, with more than 500 developers hacking on our API at over 30 different sites. Our four official locations (NYC, SF, Tokyo, and Paris) hosted over 250 hackers and, in NYC alone, a small army of over 100 developers burned through 30 pizzas, 500 cups of coffee, 130 shirts, and 200 bagels.

By the end of the weekend, 90 hacks were submitted to our official site (check them out here!). And, you get a hand in choosing the winner! Just head over to that site and vote before Thursday to choose who walks away with the grand prize title belt (and a ton of other prizes).

In particular, we wanted to send special shout-outs to Ottawa, our largest non-official site with about 30 hackers, and London, where hackers had to scramble at the last minute to find a new site and ended up camping out at a local Starbucks the entire weekend.

If you’re wondering what a hackathon is, we get a ton of coders in a room and have them build amazing things on top of foursquare. Here are some examples of what people built this weekend (these were the most popular hacks from our four official sites):

• Schedule events with our foursquare friends with gettogether.
• see how “married” you are with how blank are you, which compares your exploration to census data.
• merchants can build interactive storefronts with near.co.
• watch and create an awesome video slideshow custom to you and your check-ins with Photosquare.

And there are tons more.

So thanks to all the hackers who showed up, our amazing sponsors, and, for those reading this, be sure to play with the hacks and vote for your favorite!