What the Foursquare is it all about?

So what is this Foursquare thing all about? Well its an emerging social media service that allows you to "check in" to locations as you visit them in the physical world.

The service is available on as iPhone, Android and Blackberry apps stores or for Nokia and Windows check out the Foursquare site, here.

The application mainly relies on the built in GPS functionality of modern handsets to locate you, and relate that to the venues it holds on its database. You are only able to "check in" to a location if you are near it. User can also add locations that are not present, a great example of crowdsourcing.

As can be seen in the screen grab, I "checked in" to WIN before writing this, and you can also see the last few places I visited. Now in itself this may not sound that interesting, but the service is rapidly evolving and already has 3M users and its influence is seen as key in the launch of Facebook Places, another social location service that lauched very recently in the USA.

Foursquare also applies an open API policy that encourages other to develop complimentary / mash-up applications, these include dating, cab sharing and even a nearest free loos service.

People's competitive nature is targeted through the use of collectable badges. You earn badges but conduting a variety of activities often targeted around frequency of use. This helps stimulate repeat usage, your first "check in" earns you the Newbie badge.

Now that Foursquare is getting increased usage it has introduced Foursquare for Business. This involves partnering with local venues - bars and cafes for example - to offer special deals to users of the service. Earlier this year Domino's Pizza launched a nationwide promotion offering free pizza to users; more here.

The most recent example would be the MTV Video Music Awards promotion - it's a contest to win a trip for two to the event next month. Fans are asked to follow MTV's profile on Foursquare, then "check in" to any music venue in the next week. For doing that, they'll get a dedicated MTV VMA Moonman badge for their virtual collection, while being entered into the prize draw.

There is an opportunity is to engineer our APIs to service this rapidly evolving, predominatly mobile, open API world. Can we provide pay via mobile services for advertisers? How can we monetise the latest smart pipe enablers that operators are introducing into the market?



Oh and if you should join Foursquare, then my id is: http://foursquare.com/user/paulswaddle.