What is Foursquare? Foursquare Review

What is Foursquare? Foursquare Review

Visit Foursquare on the web at http://foursquare.com/

Foursquare Review: The Art of the Check-In

Are you looking for the next best restaurant to dine in? Are you searching for a new coffee shop to hang out? Are you in need of a new and effective way to better your business local marketing efforts? If you want all of these and other questions answered, then you should definitely turn to Foursquare for help.

What is Foursquare?

Foursquare has been around for quite some time, but if you’ve only heard of it just now, here’s a brief primer:

It is a location-based social networking app where users can find things that interest them and if they are in that particular location, “check in” to the place. What makes it interesting is users earn points and badges for every check in they make. If they have checked into a place a lot of times, they have the opportunity to become the “mayor” of the place.

How Foursquare all began

Foursquare was created in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. They initially met in 2007 when they were both working in the same office space in New York City. They began working on Foursquare at the kitchen table of Dennis’ place in the East Village of New York in the fall of 2008. They launched it in the South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas on March 2009.

Crowley had done something similar to Foursquare for his graduate thesis project in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. It was called Dodgeball and it allowed user interactions through the use of SMS technology rather than using an app (which is its current operation today).

In 2005, Dodgeball was purchased by Google. However, the company shut it down in 2009 in favor of Google Latitude, which is a location-aware feature of Google Maps. Sadly, this too was discontinued on August 9, 2013.

Foursquare is the second coming, so to speak, of Dodgeball because it practically has the same idea of people using their mobile devices to interact with their environment. And the rest they say, is history.

What’s all the fuss with Foursquare?

In other words, what are the features of Foursquare that makes people want to use it? Basically, Foursquare is an app that is downloaded into your mobile device. You can then create an account using an email address or alternately sign in using Facebook. Once that’s done, you can start adding friends, searching for places to eat, checking in and earning badges.

If Foursquare were a recipe we could really say that the ingredients are word of mouth + social media + internet. You see Foursquare lets you check out places based on word of mouth while bundling this into a cool social media platform and making it available on the fly via the internet. Foursquare also lets you rate and review places so that you can share your experiences with others while also helping them to seek out or even avoid any certain location!

That being said, here’s what makes users like the app so much:

• It’s like playing a game.

Users check in to earn points and badges in order to earn mayorship over a certain place. Some business organizations have also made use of Foursquare for special discounts and coupons.

Visit often and become the Mayor!

• It provides information on the go.

It’s not a secret that the use of mobile devices in searching for information while on the road has increased. Let’s say you are craving to eat pizza. You can fire up the Foursquare app then search for pizza and you’ll be given suggestions of dining establishments that serve the food. Not only that, it also shows the ones that are closest to your current location.

Foursquare finds what you are looking for

• It gives you information about a certain place.

A check in can also serve as a recommendation. For example, seeing a check in by your friend in a bar that you haven’t been to piques your interest. Through Foursquare, you can find information on the bar such as its location, user reviews, and suggestions. This way, you’ll know whether heading there is worth your time or not.

Know what to expect in advance

• It lets friends know where you are.

You can connect your social networks in the Foursquare app. When you do this, every check in you make is broadcast to all the social media accounts you connected. This way, your friends know where you are and get an idea of a place they can head to in the future.

Follow your friends on foursquare

• It allows you to make a list of things to check out.

You can create different lists for any interests you have. For example, you can create a list of pizza places to check out then add every restaurant that serves pizza into the list.

Create and store lists of places

• It provides advertising opportunities for businesses.

Foursquare is a good option for business advertising as it is used by over 45 million people! One nice thing about advertising here is that you are able to target local buyers who are actually looking for what you offer.

Lastly, the advertising here can give you cost effective and worthwhile exposure because you only pay for the ad when people act on it. This essentially means that the quantity of people who see your ad but do not act on it equates to free advertising because your name and brand is being exposed to them and yet you incur no charge because they did not click your ad.

Foursquare is a great local marketing platform

• It has an interesting blog page with RSS feed.

Foursquare is keen on keeping their users up to date on the latest happenings.

This is why they have provided an interesting blog that they keep regularly updated. To make this even more useful they have an available RSS feed so you can receive their blog updates without even having to visit the page.

Interesting blog page with RSS feed

• It provides a comprehensive API and mobile device apps.

Foursquare is ahead of the curve in offering a ton of very useful API’s. This allows you to customize an interface that can access and retrieve data from their system. Past that, they have made available user friendly apps for all of the most widely used mobile devices.

Killer API’s + mobile device apps

As you can see, Foursquare is a very interesting app to have especially if you enjoy going around or finding new places to try. We have all found ourselves in the car with a friend or companion where we are looking at each other and saying, “so where do we go eat at?” And on a side note, just think how handy this is when you are out of town and in an unfamiliar area and looking for the right establishment!

If you like to shop or visit different establishments around town you can benefit from the features of Foursquare. If you are a business owner you could be using Foursquare as an effective form of “local marketing.” This is truly a great platform and you can get useful functionality here for no cost out of pocket. If you have been missing out on Foursquare it will only take you a minute to get signed up….

You can visit Foursquare on the web at http://foursquare.com

You are invited to visit us at Foursquare at https://foursquare.com/impactsocialme1