For those who haven’t been on the up-and-up of the latest social media technologies, a new player has arrived. Foursquare is a unique location-based social networking website and software. The Foursqaure software allows users to “check in” at businesses through the website, text message, or the mobile app. Once the user checks in, their Facebook and Twitter accounts are then updated with the business and location where they are at.
Users who check in can earn “badges” and even become the “mayor” of a specific location by checking in the most during a 60 day period. The whole idea behind Foursquare is to give businesses additional publicity and marketing. In order to encourage the use of Foursqare, participating businesses can offer benefits and discounts for checking in, badges earned, or for users who’ve achieved “mayor” status. This in turn creates competition among users to check in more often.
Foursquare was introduced in March 2009, but was limited to only metropolitan areas. By January of 2010 Foursquare began accepting check ins from any location worldwide. One of the first large corporations to invest in Foursquare was Starbucks. By becoming a mayor at a given Starbucks location you are entitled to $1 off of a frappuccino. Starbuck’s promotion through Foursquare ended in June, and there are still a lot of question marks about Foursquare.
Here are a few issues with Starbucks use of Foursquare:
• Competition with employees: Most people cannot compete to become mayor at a specific Starbucks location with an employee who works at that very location EVERY DAY!
• Unattractive incentives: It takes a lot of check ins to become mayor. All for a $1 off a frappuccino! Not worth it to many people.
• Irrelevant advertising: Every time you check in you see an advertisement. Fine. I understand that’s how things work Foursquare has to make money somehow). However, not only are Starbucks’ ads not geo-targeted, but they aren’t always based on any information they’ve gathered from users. This is definitely more of a Foursqaure issue than a Starbucks issue. If a user constantly checks in to their favorite restaurant and bar, but they don’t drink coffee, then they shouldn’t see a Starbucks ad every other time they check in.
At this point Foursquare has a several competitors (namely Gowalla and MyTown) , but none are quite as established as Foursqaure. The biggest upside of Foursquare is that they gather information about users’ preferences. This information is becoming more and more appealing to search engine giants Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. The potential integration with search engines would display trends among businesses where people are checking in (not unlike the integration of Twitter posts into search engines). Foursquare is sitting pretty right now with $95 million in recently raised capital, and a user base of about 2 million. However, their competitors are still relevant and hoping to build off of the early successes of Foursquare.
If you’d like to learn more about how Foursquare can benefit your local business then contact Turbo Social Media today. Or call us at 1-877-673-7096 x2.
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About The Author: Tom Sullivan is the senior account executive at Turbo Social Media. He has managed accounts for a wide variety of businesses, from small “Mom and Pop” businesses to multi-million dollar corporations. His success in business stems from his entrepreneurial drive and his desire to do “whatever it takes” for his clients to be successful.
Tom received his BA in Business Management Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is a former collegiate rugby player and he enjoys playing softball, golfing, camping, and snowboarding in his spare time. 
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