Amid rapid growth, Foursquare has hired someone to help ease the load. Evan Cohen, Bebo’s former director of strategy and operations has been hired as Foursquare’s General Manager, we’ve confirmed with co-founder Dennis Crowley.

If the title sounds a bit odd, it’s because Foursquare is avoiding having executive-sounding positions, Crowley says. But Cohen’s role will be vital for the startup as he’ll be basically stepping in for much of what takes up Crowley’s time now: big deals, hiring, outgrowing our space, finances, and legal issues. “Everything that takes me away from product,” Crowley notes. In other words, basically he’ll be the COO of the young startup.

Cohen joins Foursquare at a time when the location-based atmosphere is red hot. Not only are Foursquare, Gowalla, and Loopt pushing the check-in game, but Yelp, with its 1.25 million iPhone users just got into the game as well. Crowley noted earlier today that it was one year ago when he and co-founder Naveen Selvadurai decided to take Foursquare seriously as a new business.

“Our growth curve no longer looks like a hockey stick. It looks like a skateboard ramp with 4 feet of vert. Bananatown,” Foursquare tweeted from its main Twitter account earlier today.

Cohen left Bebo sometime after it was acquired by AOL in 2008. He was currently in between jobs, but him and Crowley go way back to Crowley’s first job at Jupiter Research. Cohen brings the total number of Foursquare employees up to eight. Expect that number to keep blossoming with the Cohen hire.