The summary (in a nutshell)
I’m sure every bar and business owner would love to be able to jump in a time machine a tap into the resources of things like Facebook and Twitter before any of their competition even knew what it was. Well, while it’s a bit late for that, a new e-social service is making its rise in the ranks and now is an opportunity to be an earlier adopter. This newbie is called Foursquare (http://www.foursquare.com). In its essence, Foursquare provides a gateway for friends to broadcast where they are and what they’re doing.

EXAMPLE:
Basically, Jane Doe has gone to the EpiCentre for a night out on the town. She goes to Whisky River to have a few drinks and listen to some great music. Upon arriving, Jane pulls out her cell phone lets Foursquare know where she is and can add a little note (what Foursquare calls a shout out) like, “Having a drink and about to ride the bull at Whisky!” So how does this differ from other social networking services? Foursquare keeps statistics about how many of its users are at a venue, how often they go, and a plethora of other factoids. With this information it rewards the single most frequent patron with a “mayor of…” status; signifying that they frequent that establishment more than any of their other users. The game and “status” is what keeps them coming back. Imagine you have a favorite bar that you go to all the time. Now imagine being declared their most loyal patron. That’s a pretty big ego boost. Now imagine that title being threatened by another person. You’re going to go more often, and bring more friends with you go in order to get more points and keep your status. Some business that have already adopted this service offer incentives for foursquare users and “mayors” to keep the hype up.

Right now there are only a handful of US cities that are registered, but users from anywhere can sign up, associate with the nearest city that exists in their database and start tagging locally.

There’s a lot of murmur on the internet about this right now and it may be something that could explode. This is the perfect opportunity to get started and make a big foot print out there. Did I mention that they currently don’t charge a penny for businesses to promote? The only catch is, you have to be a registered user to add a venue. Luckily membership is also free and easy.

My take on the details (nitty-gritty)
So if you’re still reading, you must be very interested. Good. You should be. Since we’ve already covered the basics on what Foursquare is, let’s look a little deeper into how it’s used and how we can use it for businesses.

As mentioned before, Foursquare’s focus is on where you are, and what you think about being there. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Foursquare could honestly care less about what you’re doing in your day-to-day life. Basically, they don’t care if you’re “studying for a big exam tomorrow” unless you’re at “Coffee Shop X” and “think it’s a great place to study with a great cup of coffee.” The idea is that the social commentary by its users will evolve Foursquare into essentially an end-all-be-all directory for what’s “cool to do” in and given city.

Foursquare is also making it very easy for its users to keep their information up to date by utilizing one of the single most important pieces of technology that exists today; the cell phone. Depending on their type of phone, and the phone’s capabilities, they have a few different options on how to update their location. If they have an iPhone, or a phone running on Google’s new Android platform, they can simply download and app and easily stay up to date with a few touches or clicks (a BlackBerry app is currently being developed). If they don’t have one of these devices, the can go to the mobile internet page (http://m.foursquare.com) and manage their account from there. Even if they don’t have a mobile web browser on their phone, they can still text in their location. Giving users this many options and making it this easy is a recipe for success.

So how do you get added?

Right now sign up is exclusively for individuals and relies on them to create the social database for a city. So while the company itself can’t go in and add itself to the Foursquare directory, one of its patrons (or staff) can sign up and say “I’m at Company XYZ”. If Foursquare has no clue what/where Company XYZ is, it’ll ask the user for some information (mainly address, phone number, URL, etc.) to add to its database. However, business can go to the foursquare site and add a “Foursquare Special” to the directory. These specials can range and your imagination is the limit. For instance, it could be something as basic as “free cover to foursquare users when you show your check in at the door.” Or if it could be some as awesome as “The Mayor eats free!” Depending on the venue the options are pretty limitless.

Is this just one more thing that we need to keep track of?

Well yes and no. From a business level, right now all we should be doing is promoting it to people who come by and adding different deals and offers on the Foursquare site. We could even incorporate a walkthrough video on the sites showing them how to sign up and add the bar to their Foursquare. For the girls keeping twitter chirping (I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for that pun), you can actually tie twitter and Foursquare together. For instance, if someone was going to tweet “Working the beer tub at Whisky tonight, come see me!” they could now do that through Foursquare and basically say “At Whisky River at the EpiCentre, working the beer tub, come see me!” which would update both their Foursquare and Twitter status simultaneously.

Interested in hearing more? Give us a call!

Filed under: professor whirlwind by WWC