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. Over time I tried to build Foursquare into my routine around town.
Where It Fell Apart But soon the bloom came off the Foursquare rose for me. The Lesson: What New Apps Need to Succeed. 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 Wall Street Journal New York is competitor turf for the Wall Street Journal. 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.
As you can see, the huge ads entice users to check-in at the mall. 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. 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: 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. Domino's launches Foursquare campaign. Dominos Pizza has launched a nationwide promotion on location-based social gaming platform Foursquare that encourages users to check-in at its outlets.
The company, which promotes itself as the UK’s leading pizza delivery service, will offer free pizzas and discounts to Foursquare users who visit its physical outlets (nma 8 April 2010). Chris Moore, CEO of Domino’s, said, “Our customers are heavy users of social media so it makes sense for us to communicate with them in this way. Following the success of our recent Facebook superfan initiative and affiliates’ widget, Foursquare was the obvious next step.” Domino’s franchisees will give away free pizzas to the ‘mayor’ of each of its outlets once a week as part of the scheme, and every Foursquare user will receive a free side dish when spending over £10.
The deal was arranged by Domino’s digital agency Vexed after Domino’s ran previous pilot schemes at individual outlets across the country earlier in the year.