It seems that more and more as social networks evolve that there is a greater demand and influence on social currency as a means of stimilating user interaction and participation. That in combination with the fast growing trend of geolocation based services has led to some interesting mashups, but of interest today is the nifty Foursquare website that offers something for both users as clients and for business too. So lets get down to the basic questions so we know what is going on: who, what, where, when, how and why!
Who is Foursquare?
Well according to the about section of foursquare it seems that this was the idea of a couple of friends or developers who got together and decided to create a mashup application that would build on the last phase of social applications like Twitter, and Facebook. Digging slightly deeper we were able to find their Crunchbase profile and get the a better idea of who they are.
[cb]Foursquare[/cb]
What is Foursquare?
We’ll help you meet up with your friends and let you earn points and unlock badges for
discovering new places, doing new things and meeting new people. – foursquare.com
The ultimate goal is to become a “Mayor” of you city, and along the way earn badges, find out what is happening in your city, and enjoy all the cool things that your friends in your various social circles are having fun with.
What makes this so dynamic is the “Real” real-time aspect of this application. Previously with twitter, you were merely able to just post a tweet from your phone with 140 characters of where you were or what you were doing. That was a limited amount of information and a lot of the impact could have been lost.
This isn’t the case with Foursquare as you can add extra information to the location such as a handy tip like a time of day for free coffee, promotions and other give-aways that may exist.. Thus, this way you can have a more involved experience, and make determinations and decisions about where to go, when, and what to do once you go there.
Why would anyone bother to do all this?
Well the concept of getting information out in real time is not new, as seen in the status messages on networks like facebook, myspace, and twitter, to activity feeds that stream real-time data about your social network. This really in the end bears no benefits in the long term other than knowing what people are randomly doing.
With foursquare you get the opportunity to earn great rewards from business who would like to have their places promoted more on the site. This ranges from a very long list of restaurants and bars to sound recording studios and retail stores. Some of the perks are:
- $1 macchiatos
- Free Slice & drink on your 10th checkin.
- Free Shot on your 10th check-in
- Free Auto-Tune Karaoke
Conclusion
The thing that makes foursquare so immediate is because it is so focused on real-time and you have the ability to check-in to various places to earn points from your phone or mobile device as well as your pc. It seems that there was clear planning and foresight as you can download a number of mobile platforms, like the iPhone app, the Android app, and the Blackberry app.
So as the service continues to rapidly grow you can be sure that you can expect the list of business that support, and list of offers to grow. Thus getting connected to foursquare may not be that bad of an idea.