Loopt, the location-based mobile application that was a precursor to Foursquare, reports that Starbucks is sitting pretty at the top of the checkin food chain in 2010.

Loopt did some creative manipulation of its wealth of place data and put together a list of the 75 most popular chains based on checkin volume over the past few weeks.

Starbucks is far and away the most popular chain with a checkin volume that is nearly 32 times that of In-N-Out Burger (which ranks 54th on the list).

It also looks as if New Year’s resolutions are inspiring people to either hit the gym more frequently or at least publicly assert that they are doing so, as 24-Hour Fitness is burning the rest of the competition in the number five spot. On that same note, Subway ranks pretty high up on the list, but its checkin share is dwarfed by McDonald’s. Clearly you want to have your cake and to eat it, too.

According to Loopt CEO Sam Altman, to come up with this data set, the company “normalize(s) the number of checkins per chain by dividing all of them by a chosen reference (In-N-Out, which is approximately representative of the average).  The thought here is that, for example, 8,739 checkins doesn’t mean much to anyone, but 2.45 is a good indicator of relative popularity.”

Slicing checkins to determine relative chain popularity is certainly a very interesting way to look at the Loopt data, whether or not it’s 100 percent reflective of societal shopping and eating trends. The fact that people are willing to publicly share what they’re doing and where they’re doing it en masse means that the most popular places are the places at which people want to be seen. Making that extra checkin effort is a net positive for the business, and clearly Starbucks is riding high on the checkin wave.

We’ve published the full list below, so take a look at the results and let us know what you think of the results.

Most Popular Chains

[img credit: dianaschnuth]

Tags: Food, loopt, MARKETING, Mobile 2.0, starbucks

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