Why I love FourSquare.
I remember where I was when September 11th happened. I remember where I was when Obama gave his inauguration speech. I remember where I was when, wait for it, I signed up for FourSquare.
It was a cool night in Austin, Texas. I was sitting at the bar at Buffalo Billiards upstairs with Mark Jaquith at an SMC party for SXSW. I had just met Chris Heuer and was sipping on a ice-cold Lonestar. Mark and I actually met on the plane to SXSW, so we met up Sunday night to catch up and reflect. He asked me if I had heard of foursquare. I hadn’t, and he set me up. I used it to find out where everyone was going for different parties, dinner, what have you in the area while AT&T’s 3G service was making texting near impossible.
After SXSW, I went back home to Tampa, that was not a foursquare city. Now I’m in Chicago, and all of the sudden, in like, the past week or two, everyone and their mom is on board. And it’s super exciting! Now I have more ways to explore Chicago – see what’s nearby and what people are enjoying.
Last weekend when I went home to Orlando, I checked in at the airport and my parent’s house and just created new venues as usual, even though we were pretending I was in Chicago. The cool thing is, even if you aren’t in a foursquare city, you can add venues and the map is correct and everything. You can also nominate your city to be a foursquare city here.
The leaderboard shows you where you rank with your friends in your city:
So what is foursquare? For now, it’s just a fun game. Dennis and Naveen describe it as 50% friend-finder, 30% social cityguide, 20% nightlife game. Pretty awesome, right? For an overview, go here. I think in the future, Mayors should get some kind of deal at the venue. If you check in, you get some kind of coupon or something. The FourSquare team is playing around in NYC with a coupon company to see just how well this could work.
Now, all fun aside, how can this be used in PR? Can it be? Should it be? How can brands incorporate themselves into this kind of application? I have a lot of ideas on this, but I want to hear yours, so sound off!
Related: Mashable’s take on Foursquare, why it may be the next Twitter.
