Why I’m out of Foursquare, and Why Some Apps Succeed. And so another personal venture into the new is complete. Following in the footsteps of services such as Second Life and Pointcast, I have now decided that Foursquare is no longer for me. It has gone down a personal “hype cycle” in my life–going from interesting to integral to ignoble in just a few months.
Where once I was checking in with glee and sharing my whereabouts with new collections of friends, now I’m moving on with life and onto Facebook Places. My personal journey is one that others have also reported, and I think a look into why Foursquare worked for a while, and how others continue to be a part of my life, shows a path to meaningful platforms. What I Loved About Foursquare I got into Foursquare big-time back in March 2010 during the annual SXSW event. I attended with a small group of Bridge people and we had fun checking into new places and tracking each other’s locations around Austin. Over time I tried to build Foursquare into my routine around town. Where It Fell Apart. Next Twitter? It's 4square. Geomarketing: Ten Foursquare marketing campaigns. Geolocation-based social network Foursquare just might be the internet's 'next big thing'.
While it isn't anywhere close to the size of Twitter or Facebook, the young company last month passed the million user mark. That's a memorable milestone for any consumer internet startup, but the company's progress is perhaps better measured by the number of marketing deals it has inked with bigger companies. Here are 10 of those deals. Bravo Cable television network Bravo turned to Foursquare to help drive its viewers to more than 500 locations associated with the network's shows. The incentive: badges right now; sweepstakes and awards in the future. The Wall Street Journal New York is competitor turf for the Wall Street Journal. Zagat Before you 'check in' to a restaurant, restaurant guide publisher Zagat wants Foursquare users to be able to access its reviews, and provide their own suggestions to Foursquare followers as well.
Starbucks Tasti D-Lite Pepsi Planet Hollywood Lucky Magazine Financial Times. Foursquare, Baby, Foursquare. Foursquare may still be relatively small (around 450,000 users), but wow have they been able to woo certain areas of the mainstream quickly. We already know about the deals with Conde Nast, Marc Jacobs, the New York Times, and others — some of which are pulling in revenue. And then there’s the Bravo deal, which has already included a commercial spot. But now, Foursquare is getting love in the bright lights of Vegas. Yes, the pictures above and below were taken at the Miracle Mile Shops attached to the Planet Hollywood hotel in Las Vegas.
Planet Hollywood was actually one of the first venues to take advantage of the “check-in deals” that Foursquare has been offering for some time now. These ads were apparently done with the help of place-based social media site, LocaModa. [pics via flickr/dpstyles and twitpic/tristanwalker] Zagat-Foursquare Deal: Going Out Just Got A Lot More Fun : Media. Tuesday, February 9, 2010, by Greg Morabito Today, the Times' Bits blog reports that Zagat is teaming up with Foursquare to enhance the game play element of the social networking site with Zagat badges, and related interactive content. The shorthand is that in addition to earning Zagat "Foodie" badges by checking into Zagat-rated restaurants, Foursquare users will also receive review content from Zagat on places that they have checked into. There's some nice synergy there, as Foursquare already serves as a nightlife guide to many of its users. Says Ryan Charles, a Zagat Product Manager, of the deal: "We saw thousands of Foursquare users checking in to Zagat-rated restaurants, and saw an opportunity to present content to them as well as engage them in game-play.
" The Zagat deal will also offer Foursquare die-hards something far, far more valuable than restaurant recs, or more badges: Potential Internet Fame. Pepsi/Foursquare. As you may know, every checkin on foursquare generates points and we display the top users on the leaderboard. Users from city to city compete using this “high score board for exploring your city” as a baseline. About a month ago, we made some noise to trying to find a sponsor for our NYC leaderboard. We had this idea that if we could turn points into dollars, we could probably find some way to turn those dollars over to local charities. And here we are, a month later, announcing a leaderboard sponsorship with Pepsi to do just that! This week (starting last night, thru Sunday Dec 13 @ 11:59p), every point added to the foursquare leaderboard will be lead to Pepsi donating $0.04 to CampInteractive, an organization that helps empower inner-city youth through technology skills and mentoring.
A quick round of thanks to our leadererboard sponsor Pepsi and to Adam Gillman & Simon Kirk at Techies Give Back (these two made it all happen!)