When you think of foursquare, the first thing that might come to mind is a game you played at recess when you were in elementary school. Well, times are changing, and the next time you hear someone talking about foursquare, they’re probably talking about the ever-growing location-based social media tool.
How it works for users:
Foursquare is a social media tool that allows people to post their location from GPS based smart phones, or via text from a regular cell phone. This is called “checking in,” and the more you check in, the more “rewards” you can earn. There are two different types of rewards: badges and mayor-ships.
There are many different ways you can earn a badge on foursquare, but it will always involve checking in. One example of this is the “explorer” badge, which you earn after checking into 25 different locations. Foursquare also has badges that are location and event specific. Recently, they teamed up with SXSW (South by Southwest), a 9 day music, film, and interactive event in Austin, TX to create a cornucopia of badges a user could earn while “exploring” the event. To earn mayor-ship of a location, you must have the most check-ins at a specific location in the past 60 days. Once you’ve achieved this, you become the undisputed mayor of that location…that is, until someone else frequents that venue more than you and steals the crown.
How it works for businesses:
Foursquare is a great way to get people to visit your business, post about their experience, and create an interactive community. Foursquare works well for places like restaurants, coffee shops, retail stores, bars/clubs, gyms, hair salons, and other venues that people visit regularly.
To register your business, all you have to do is claim it here on the foursquare website. Once set up, you can offer discounts, run promotions and offer other benefits to foursquare users. For example, a local restaurant can offer 10% off to all foursquare users who visit, or reward users who check in X amount of times at their location in one month. Not only would this encourage consumers to frequent to your business, it broadcasts your business across other social media sites since foursquare check-ins can be synced to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn feeds. Also, business owners can track real time stats including: most frequent visitors, time of day people check in, gender profiles, and many more. Did we mention foursquare is a a free promotional tool for business?
So if you’re a local business and looking to drive a more traffic into your establishment, it might be time to lace up your shoes and jump in to foursquare!
Great post! I’ve been using foursquare on my iPhone for a while and really enjoy it, but have always wondered how smaller businesses could take advantage of it.
Lately, I’ve also been trying out Gowalla on my iPhone and have really enjoyed it’s superior UI and graphics in comparison to foursquare. Of course, it does not have as many users as foursquare but I see real potential.
Do you see any future potential for Gowalla, or do you see the Location-Based Social Networking game being a one horse race at this point?
Comment by Eric — May 25, 2010 @ 12:49 pm
Good Question!
There’s no doubt that Gowalla’s user-interface and graphics undeniably have the upper hand on foursquare from an aesthetic point of view. It also has various features that foursquare lacks, like setting events, setting trips, and item swapping, dropping, and collecting which can be quite beneficial.
On the other hand, foursquare is already winning the race (1 million users to Gowalla’s 150,000), and its usually very hard to have a come-back victory in the world of new technology. With that said, connecting with friends is a major feature of these social media tools, and people are going to use what their friends are using, which in this instance seems to be foursquare.
To answer your question, Gowalla (although a smaller community) has a great deal of potential. With its beautiful aesthetics and incredibly addicting item swapping and collecting features, it could become a very popular Location-Based Social Media Tool. Will it prevail over foursquare? No. But Gowalla’s user population will continue to grow, and at the same time develop into more of an “underground” type of foursquare; and although not as many people will be using it, the people are will be extremely dedicated, or even addicted.
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