How Companies Are Using Data from Foursquare. When Foursquare began, it was easy to wonder what the point was beyond the game. It asked people to “check in” when visiting places like shops, bars, or restaurants and then gave them a chance to compete for virtual prizes, like badges and recognition as “mayor” after visiting a place more than anyone else. Now, with more than nine million users, Foursquare is beginning to prove its value to businesses. It is becoming the rare social-media service that lets them directly analyze whether promotions lead to sales.
Take RadioShack, a company aiming to survive the price wars in consumer electronics by driving in-store sales. It first partnered with Foursquare last August to offer a 10 percent discount to anyone who checked in on a phone at one of its locations and 20 percent to any RadioShack “mayor.” After the initial promotion and a successful holiday campaign, the company launched a “newbie special” to target more Foursquare shoppers.
Four legal predictions for Foursquare. While the percentage of people actively sharing their location may still be pretty small, it feels like we're zooming toward an event horizon, beyond which everyone will be opting in - and checking in - to location services like Foursquare, Places, and others. Skeptics about the uptake of location services remain, but I'm not one of them. You might, like Sam Diaz, appreciate a good deal (count me in on that point too). Or perhaps you're a parent in search of an impromptu play date, a businessperson in search of leads or networking, a hipster in search of the night's hotspot, a techie who enjoys following in Mark Zuckerberg's culinary wake, or anyone attempting to sync up with a friend or colleague's schedule and connect in the real world.
Like other online activities, location sharing's privacy tradeoff ultimately is (or will be, for a great many) overcome by its payoff in convenience, perks, and timely, relevant information. Location-savvy privacy standards and penalties. Foursquare Targets College Students with New Universities Program. Foursquare announced the rollout its Foursquare for Universities program Thursday afternoon, designed to help students, alumni and staff share information about classes, building hours, campus activities and traditions, and other information. Late nights at the library are now a little bit better thanks to the geosocial service, which will reward you in badges what you missed in sleep (depending on how much value you put on virtual badges, anyways).
And if you start to see more compsci majors at the Homecoming football game this season, you can thank Foursquare's school spirit badge for that, too. The startup has partnered with 20 universities for the launch, along with student ambassadors located at several dozen others. If your university isn't one of them, however, don't despair; Foursquare makes it easy for users to claim and build a university page on the service with a short questionnaire. Image courtesy of Flickr, Šarūnas B.. Foursquare: A Glimpse at the Future. Foursquare CEO and co-founder Dennis Crowley spoke on how the location-based service plans to dominate "what happens after the checkin" at Wednesday's ad:tech conference.
Crowley delivered his remarks on the same day Facebook made several major announcements about its Places product. While Crowley still sees the checkin as a necessary component of Foursquare's service, he believes the real value of location-based services begins after that entry point. "We talk a lot about what's after the checkin," explained Crowley. "What's after, in the first version at least, [is] 'ok, let's do tips.' So, when you check in to some place, we can surface up relevant content that will maybe sway what you order at dinner. Or, let's do the game mechanics that will take the place [of tips] if we don't have any tips at that place. That's the Foursquare we now know, but what's in store for the future? Customized Recommendations "Every checkin should mean something," he stressed.
The Instant Checkin. Foursquare vs. Gowalla: Who’s Winning the Geolocation War? | NetSparsh ~ Entertainment Unlimited. Foursquare Beats Facebook Places in Reader Vote. Facebook has made its grand entrance into the geolocation space with Facebook Places. Will users embrace it and ditch Foursquare? That's the question we posed in this week's Web Faceoff, our ongoing series comparing technology apps or ideas. We asked you which location-based service you preferred: Facebook Places or Foursquare? This week's winner: Foursquare! The contest wasn't even close; with 57.11% of the vote (1,611 votes), Foursquare remained the king of geolocation.
Many of you pointed out that Facebook Places and Foursquare are likely to be used by different types of people for different purposes. What do you think this week's poll results? How I became a Foursquare cyberstalker | Technology. Louise has straight, auburn hair and, judging by the only photograph I have of her, she's in her 30s. She works in recruitment. I also know which train station she uses regularly, what supermarket she shopped at last night and where she met her friends for a meal in her home town last week.
At this moment, she is somewhere inside the pub in front of me meeting with colleagues after work. Louise is a complete stranger. Foursquare is the latest social networking tool to generate online buzz. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Bebo have all come before it, but Foursquare promises something new. Foursquare is now being widely touted as the app which will, after years of anticipation and prediction, mark the beginning of "life as a game" computing. But with such power comes responsibility and there are growing concerns that Foursquare is proving to be a "stalker's dream". "I'm trying to be white-hat [computing slang for a 'good guy']," Andersen told Wired.com. "Yes, downstairs.
" Foursquare looks beyond location: Is your check-in startup in trouble? Foursquare announced a new partnership today, hinting at how the startup’s ambitions extend beyond location check-ins. The new partnership is with Runkeeper, a mobile application for tracking your running and jogging activity. When users connect their accounts, they can earn Foursquare badges for their activity in Runkeeper, for example earning a Marathon badge when they run a marathon.
Foursquare says this is “the first badge you unlock by doing something, not just checking in.” That also means the badges won’t really be connected to your location, at least not in the way Foursquare’s other badges are — you earn a Gym Rat badge by going to the gym, while you earn Runkeeper badges by running anywhere. Foursquare says it’s pursuing similar deals with “a handful of carefully selected partners.” This seems like a smart way to keep users connected to Foursquare even if they’re not using the app. And these partnerships should also help Foursquare keep its badge concept fresh. Foursquare: A Glimpse at the Future.