Foursquare announced today that Foursquare 3.0 will be released later tonight with quite a few new features. The first of these is the "Explore" section. Type a query in for a specific type of place you'd like to go to and hopefully you'll some good results. There are shortcuts for food, coffee, nightlife, shops, and A&E.

Foursquare furthers the integration with friends on the new "Me" tab, which in a nutshell will let you check out places your friends visit the most.

Next on the list is a revamped leaderboard page. Foursquare states:

You’ll see that we’ve replaced our old leaderboard (and its simple points system and Sunday night reset) with a sliding 7-day barometer of you and your friends. Check-ins now trigger points for dozens of different types of actions – everything from discovering new places, trying new types of restaurants, visiting new cities, getting groups together, hanging out with old friends, and a few things you might not expect.

Finally, Foursquare will add many different formats of deals for businesses to choose from and offer. These new formats include swarms, groups of friends, regulars, brand new customers, majors (in Foursquare), or to all. In the Places tab, you'll be able to see all deals close to your current location.

Version 3.0 will be available for iPhone and Android users later tonight, while BlackBerry users will have to wait. I've always been a Gowalla man myself, but I'll think I'll give Foursquare 3.0 a brief test run and hopefully come back with a review in a couple of weeks to see if it's worth making a switch. Meanwhile, if you've been on Foursquare in a while and you're feeling unenthusiastic about 3.0, I highly recommend checking out Gowalla.