Foursquare: Make The City Your Playground

(Guest Post by Ilan Peer)

Since I don’t have an iPhone, it rarely happens that I update my location status, or tweeting where i hang out. To top this all off, I don’t even fully utilize this cool app that I’m writing about! Since it really caught my attention, I wanted to share my thoughts on foursquare – an application that allows you explore your city – has unlocked a certain code for location based service engagement and positively affected income of many local businesses.

An interesting fact about foursquare is that one of their Founders, Dennis Crowley, is a also the former Founder of Dodgeball – another location-based social network that was acquired by Google (can you see the pattern here?). I once read that Dennis was a student of Clay Shirky – which makes his background very credible. Foursquare started with 12 cities and have already reached 53!

The simplicity of the foursquare game is amazing. People “tag” places and venues to get points and badges that will place them in a higher social graph. Meanwhile, local businesses enjoy the uprising of visits to their establishments. The latter part may sponsor a free drink or snack for the mayors (user with most visits to their venue). It is easy to see how this service is addicting when distinguished members of the high-tech industry Tweet about their mayorship.

Here is the foursquare business plan and it’s simple: there are about 150 venues offering mayor specials (treats exclusively for top visitors).

The game is based on a social network of recommendations. Whether it’s a new pub, a special dish or friends’ based recommendation, there are 3 advantages that you can benefit from:

1. Find Your Friends – if not, what the heck are we all doing in facebook??

2. Points and Badges – getting recognition, free drinks and nachos!

3. Explore the City – as they put it: “Think less ‘the food here is top notch!’ and more ‘Go here, do this’ “

These tags and friending-up people are very common these days: follows, lists, groups and fan pages – all these “sort us up.”

It is like when Twitter came up with lists. I think Twitter is in need for people to sort and list the huge directory of people in their data base. As far as foursquare goes, us users will probably turn to little Yellow Page agents, going places, tagging and passing info on to as personal tips (hence the friends layer: the WOM effect).

I’m very close, yet still far from using foursquare since they have not hit Tel-Aviv yet. When foursquare does decide to hit tel aviv, i bet you’ll see me running the streets looking to tag new venues and becoming the mayor of my favorite diners.

Until then, I’ll give it a try with the Israeli new site called CUin.co.il which allows users to look up their friends from Facebook (via Facebook connect) and see where they have checked in.

Update:
Foursquare announced they will open their service for Tel Aviv city in the next few days
Article at Nana10.co.il [in hebrew]

And a presentation by Dennis Crowley at Mobile Monday Amsterdam:

photo by: the lovely miss604

Ilan Peer is the Advertising and Marketing Manager at Blonde 2.0

He is a veteran in the Israeli interactive industry. He’s experienced in creative, design, UI, account managing and media buying. Technology is his fetish. He’s an early adaptor and a gadget freak.