Today’s link is not just a web site. It’s a phenomenon. FourSquare.com is the leading example of a growing trend: location-based social networking.
FourSquare is essentially an ongoing game played around real-life locations using a smart phone.
The idea is that you earn points for checking in at whatever location you’re in – your favourite coffee shop, the library, wherever. You earn more points for leaving tips for others and for exploring new locations in your city. Check in enough times at the same location and you become the mayor of that location for the week.
Why would anyone do this? Bragging rights, for one. Think about why graffiti artists tag a building – other graffiti artists see the tag and know who was there. (It may interest you to know that, as far as FourSquare is concerned, our own Gavin Wiggins is the mayor of JWT Toronto this week).
More importantly – and this is where relevance to our clients’ businesses come in – there are tangible benefits to playing the game. FourSquare has partnered with local retailers, bars, coffee shops etc where that week’s mayor gets a discount or something for free. And Harvard University has started using FourSquare as part of their new student orientation.
The thing to think about is the opportunity that FourSquare represents: rewarding customer loyalty based on social behavior is another way to engage with a savvy consumer segment. Imagine the buzz and the number of potential extra visits a Tim Horton’s location might generate if they announced each week’s FourSquare mayor gets a free coffee. Or if the Wal-Mart electronics section ran a FourSquare-based promotion.
Right now we’re looking at how we can take advantage of social networking behavior for an online contest we’re developing for Crush and their young, mobile-phone-using target audience.
But the bottom line on FourSquare is that the technology it uses is less relevant than what it’s based on: how people behave. And that’s something we all know very well.
And how they speak to businesses.
Bonus links: what others are saying about FourSquare.
Harvard – foursquare partnership.
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