Foursquare Review

For about a week now I’ve been reviewing Foursquare using my iPhone. Foursquare is a location-based social network, similar to twitter (in-fact it connects to twitter if you want), that, among other things, allows you to ‘check in’ to different places you go and review them. At a bare minimum, it a fun little game to show your friends where you are at any given moment, but has the potential to become a great marketing tool for businesses around the world.

I’ll start with the basics of this app and expand from there.

Once you have an account, which is free, and let Foursquare know what city you’re in, every time you go anywhere you can ‘Check-in’ to notify your friend where you are. You gain points when you check-in somewhere in the hopes of not only having the most points but also becoming the Mayor of places and unlocking Badges.

If you find yourself visiting a place often you have the chance to become the Mayor, this means you are the person that visits that place the most. There is great marketing potential with this that I’ll explain later.

Every time you check-in to a place or find a new place that no other Foursquare user has visited before you earn points. The more points you acquire and the more places you go, the better the chance for you to earn Badges. There are badges for discovering new places, traveling to faraway places and even going to the same place multiple times.

Since your already visiting the world and checking-in, Foursquare gives you the ability to add your own review called a ‘To-Do’. For example, if you visit a great burger joint, once you check-in to that place you can recommend something to other visitors by adding it. There are also Nearby Tips that can give you recommendations to places near-by your location.

To every check-in you can ‘Shout’ something. I recently found myself to be Mayor of the Fenton Wal-Mart, just what I’ve always wanted. So to save my pride a little, and to cover up the fact that I’m at Wal-Mart I wrote a witty comment in the shout box.

Everything I do and everywhere I go on Foursquare I have automatically post to Twitter. This is nice for multiple reasons. First, I don’t have to post something twice, in case I wanted to tell the world where I was on Twitter. Second, it could draw more people into joining the Foursquare community. As with any Social Networking site, more users = more fun.

Marketing

This could be an excellent tool for local businesses to use in the marketing world. If you have someone that comes to your establishment often (and becomes Mayor), why not reward them by giving them something free or a discount. This may stir up a friendly competition to visit your establishment more often. Businesses can learn more about Foursquare for Businesses here.

A good St. Louis example of this is the Missouri Botanical Garden. They posted, “Make sure to check in, using Foursquare, during the months of November and December! Top 5 Foursquare users will get free tickets to the 2010 Orchid Show!”

So far I haven’t had too much trouble with the iPhone app, it occasionally crashes (once or twice a week) when I try and check-in to places, and I couldn’t add a location once. But other than that, I’ve had no major issues.

So if you’re are using Foursquare and want to be my friend, be my friend on Twitter and add me that way or just add John Nemec.

Popularity: 2% [?]