With so much coverage of Foursquare lately (not just by me), I’ve had several people ask me what Foursquare is. Foursquare is an application for your phone that allows you to see where your friends are and tell them where you are. It also has a game aspect because you earn points and badges for checking in to new places, submitting new places and accomplishing certain tasks. Businesses are excited about Foursquare because it gives them a way to see who is frequenting their locations, as well as market to people who are nearby. Most importantly, Foursquare gives businesses the opportunity to reward their loyal customers, as well as have those loyal customers recommend the business to their friends.
So let’s walk through a Foursquare experience (from a customer’s standpoint). After installing the software on their phone, they open the application and it’ll show them places that are nearby their current location:
You can choose one of the locations in the list (notice it has favorite places you’ve checked in to from that location), or you can search for a different location or add a place that’s not listed. You can select a place and see who is mayor (more on that later), tips and details for the location:
Once you check in, you’re awarded points. How many depends on whether this is a new place for you to check in, how many stops you’ve made where you’ve checked in today, etc.:
If you’re the one with the most checkins in a location, you’re the mayor. For businesses, they can see who the mayor of their location is and can then offer rewards for mayorships. Businesses are also starting to offer specials based on location.
As you accrue points, you can also earn badges for various tasks or amounts of checkins or points:
So there’s a very addictive game portion of Foursquare – achieving points and badges, which is very attractive & fun for people who use it.
I can also see where my friends have checked in. And if they’ve checked in to a location near where I have and left a tip or note, I’ll see that too: (friend’s names have been removed for privacy)
The easiest way to learn about Foursquare is just to try it. If you don’t like it, just delete it off your phone. Keep in mind who you friend and whether you’re ok with people knowing where you are. Although, you can choose by checkin whether or not you share your location, as well as whether it’s shared out to Twitter or Facebook. If you’d like, you can friend me – I’m Sazbean Worsham on Foursquare.
Whether you should use Foursquare for your business is another post entirely. Look for that later this week.
Do you use Foursquare? What do you like/dislike about it? How do you use it?