Foursquaring all over the place
There are hundreds of new social networking sites popping up all the time, a select few of them catch on and reach bandwagon status. A fairly recent one has been foursquare; I saw this a few months ago and could see the potential for some of our clients and on I jumped.
Foursquare has (like many others) tapped into an egotistical desire that most people possess to some degree ‘to be seen as popular with an interesting life’, so what better way than to show off all the cool places that you go to and the things you get up to than on the Internet for all the world to see?
Now I am a complete curtain twitcher of the highest form, I have to sit with my back to the wall in restaurants and pubs just so I can see everything going on around me, listen (often open mouthed) to other people's conversations in public places and jump to the window if I hear anything vaguely out of the ordinary going on out in the street. Yes I am very nosey, so foursquare is a little something extra to abate my ‘twitching’ desires, but unfortunately I’m starting to get a little bored.
I have been using this for a couple of months now and I’m starting to think what is the point, I check into somewhere and apart from getting badges for achieving various milestones there is nothing to keep my interest up.
So what else is there to keep me interested? The badges of course, yes I got the ‘on a school night’ badge, aren’t I cool? Now what else? Some businesses offer promotions to ‘Mayors’, I saw that a local Dominos was giving a free pizza to their Mayor every Wednesday. This is great, but why not open the offers up to other users, for example ‘Check in Tuesdays’ where the business could give special offers to all those who check in on a Tuesday, just show their check in to the staff on their mobile phones and receive something for free or discounted?
Obviously it is great for getting honest tips from other users, so I can look at my network and see the popular places to go and what is good to eat or experience. It would be good if there was a way for businesses to respond to positive or negative tips, or discussion forums for users and businesses to talk to each other.
Interaction with other users is minimal, I can see the take up of this to be massive and quickly lose momentum unless there is something new to offer users. The all important question… Once I have all my badges what do I do next?
28/07
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