Foursquare has been making a lot of noise lately. They have assembled a number of “rock-star” angel investors which include; Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, angel inve
sting legend Ron Conway, delicious founder Joshua Schachter and Digg founder Kevin Rose – along with venture firms Union Square Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures as reported by TechCrunch. It seems like almost daily there are new, wonderful stories about how Foursquare is going to revolutionize social networks. Needless to say, the buzz being generated over the last few weeks has been pretty relentless.
So what is Foursquare? A social networking app – an online gaming app – a location based service? The answer is all of the above. Foursquare is merging elements of a social networking platform with elements of an online game all tied together with a cool location based system. Users compete for “mayorships”, and try to earn “badges” and get virtual points for checking in more places. By syncing their service around a “check-in” rather than GPS point alleviates the “stalker” element that surrounds most location based services.
Foursquare has been promoting their application by showing the potential of using location for a business model. Foursquare has been pinging their members to let them know about cool deals near them at a local venue. Some participating venues have been offering deals like free beer to mayors.
These guys are really onto something, I think? I have a full social network that goes everywhere I do; currently available on the Apple iPhone, Google Android and Blackberry. There’s a fun “virtual currency” element to the service – who wouldn’t want to be the mayor of their favorite local pub. Plus, there is a really interesting business model that emerges as use grows potentially linking online and offline advertisers to drive some pretty compelling traffic – eyeballs and feet.
Nonetheless, the guys at Foursquare have some pretty big competition ahead of them – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Orkut – pretty much any large social network that cares about mobility. That said, this app is pretty cool – people WILL use it, no doubt. In a recent episode of The Simpsons, even Bart’s been using the app (wonder if he has the new iPhone 3GS?). As Foursquare moves into more locations (currently their service is most pervasive in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco) their networks of “mayorships” will create an interesting social dynamic. Can’t wait to play a little Foursquare!
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