What is Foursquare and how does it work?
Essentially, Foursquare is a geo-location game which allows you to check in to venues or areas from your iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and other devices. You can build a personal to-do list, add or find location-based tips (like what pudding you should try), build a ‘top 12’ list and read city guides.
Your friends see when you check in and you can ‘shout’ to, for instance, tell them what’s happening there. Obviously, invite people you actually know and wouldn’t mind knowing where you are. There is no advantage to adding strangers. Foursquare is about how much you do not how many people you know. You can receive pings whenever a friend checks in or shouts and you can easily turn pings off.
Check in at one location enough and you can become the mayor. You also receive badges for accomplishments like checking in at a number of different places in one night. If you link Foursquare with Twitter and Facebook, as it encourages you to, you can tweet locations or share when you become mayor or win a badge. You can also choose to only do this manually.
Why on earth would I want to use Foursquare?
Perhaps irritatingly, the question of what Foursquare is for is most effectively answered by using it. Twitter’s uses have evolved over time. In a sense, its point has been defined by its users and the same is happening with Foursquare. And like Twitter, you need to use it to understand it.
Already it has great real-life potential. Using it as privately or publicly as you choose, Foursquare offers an avenue for meeting like-minded people whether at an art exhibition or a conference. As more businesses get in on the action, coffee houses are offering mayors and regular patrons freebies and some stores and restaurants are offering discounts. With the tips, you will never be at a loose end when trying to find things to do in your area or ideas for entertaining clients.
It will take some time for Foursquare to fully-evolve into the social-networking site it is going to be and at the moment the male to female ratio is said to be two to one. But at the rate it’s growing, it’s only a matter of time until we find checking in as natural as tweeting.
At any rate, Foursquare gives an incentive to leave the office at lunchtime.
