Why Foursquare is good for business
Foursquare has revealed a there have been over 22 million check-ins by its users. Twitter has 50 million tweets per day, but Foursquares stats are impressive for a company that is only one year old.
What is foursquare?
Foursquare is a location service-based social network-come-game. What it does in effect is to tell you where your friends are and add a little fun to going out in the evening. It’s like Google Lattitude meets a little bit of Facebook, a touch of Twitter and a dash of Qype.
How does foursquare work?
Foursquare is based around what is known as “checking-in”. You check-in from bars and restaurants and any kind of nightspot or watering hole, perhaps with a little message about where you are and what you’re doing – all very brief – and the system will then register what you’re up to. People who you’re friends with will then get pinged a message to let them know your whereabouts and activities, and the idea is that they can then join you if they fancy or just be pleased that you’re out having a good time. From the other side of things, if you’re out on your own somewhere, or stuck at home and bored, you can see where everyone’s at and get yourself down to the party.
And what about the game?
The clever, part is that you get points for checking-in. You can only get points for checking-in outside of work hours – presumably to prevent potential mass job loss. The points aren’t good for anything other than bragging rights but that’s currency a-plenty with a leader board on the site with the top users. Also, if you check-in from the same place more times and more regularly than anyone else, then you might find yourself crowned Mayor of that gaff on the site – an honour that many may try to wrestle from you but then, that’s part of the fun. You’ll probably begin as rivals and end up the next week amassing 50 points together on some all night bender.
You can also earn badges as you check-in which is where the parallel of World of Warcraft and its Achievements system lies. There are badges for the number of times you’ve checked-in to new establishments from Newbie up to Superstar, plus all sorts of random and more cryptic titles to earn. This is where the real addiction lies, especially with the team working on and taking suggestions for all sorts of new badges
The really clever part
That’s basically the fun side of foursquare and what you’ll appreciate as a user, but while all this is going on, the owners of the service are also gathering some very considerable review and guide data for all the best spots in a whole bunch of major cities all over the world. It’s the kind of user-generated content that Qype specialises in but in a much less in-depth way. Can anyone use it?
