Interview Shows Foursquare Could be Interesting for Business
Foursquare explained by Co-Founder Denis Crowley – interview with J D Lasica
Although I haven’t yet hooked into the location-based, mobile-enabled service Foursquare, I’m interested to know what the buzz is about. On Twitter I see all these tweets about people becoming “mayor” of various locations. I’ve also noticed some criticism, such as the suggestion that Foursquare could be “super useful for burglars” (there was a response by Foursquare).
In a recent post, J D Lasica reports on his four minute interview with Foursquare CEO and Co-Founder, Denis Crowley:
There is quite a bit of background noise in the video, but I picked up these few bullet points.
- they (the people behind Foursquare) want to provide “things to make cities easier to use”
- they are “trying to make the real world more playful”
- they want to “provide rewards for things people do”
- “It’s always been about getting credit for doing things you do in real life anyway”
I don’t see businesses getting too excited about Foursquare just yet, but it looks as if the service is making waves, especially among the 20-30 somethings, and although the company is only a year old, they are expecting to hit the one million user mark by May – or sooner.
Evidently the service is proving of some interest to local merchants, for example in helping them understand who their more frequent customers are.
For once I am not eager to try the “new, new thing” straight away, but it will be interesting to see how Foursquare goes.
Will it be the “Twitter of 2010” as some, according to J D Lasica, are saying? Who knows? I’m mindful of the fact that when I joined Twitter three years ago I had no idea how huge and generally pervasive it would become, and so quickly.
Are you using Foursquare? Do you find it fun? Do you find it useful?
Video by J D Lasica on Vimeo: Creative Commons licence
Des Walsh
Business coach and digital entrepreneur. With coach training from Coachville.com and its Graduate School of Coaching, and a founding member of the International Association of Coaching, Des has been coaching business owners and entrepreneurs for the past 20 years. Over the same period he has also been actively engaged in promoting the business opportunities of the digital economy. He is a certified Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) coach, and a certified specialist in social media strategy and affiliate marketing.
There’s a bit more to foursquare than that. To me, there’s a couple of business-based benefits that these “social games” have.
1) Location-based and trusted recommendations. For instance, if I’m in downtown Boston checking in a store, I’ll get recommendations of good restaurants, stores, or activities that are close from my foursquare friends. This capability could be broken down a bit further by foursquare by also building presence capabilities and preferences from the consumer side, but the potential is there.
2) Proactive coupons and immediate traffic drivers. I get emails from my favorite stores during poor retail days (due to snowstorms, floods, whatever), but adding these on a location or need-based basis would be interesting as well. Foursquare is one channel to do this.
3) One interesting concept that foursquare hasn’t pursued yet is to track location-based behavior for teams or groups. This could create location-based “clouds” of recent activity. The information could drive everything from site surveys for new businesses to more interactive vendor sites and activities.
There’s something there, but the concept still isn’t fully baked either by foursquare or any of their competitors.
Thanks Hyoun
The examples – including the one they haven’t yet pursued – make lots of sense.
Des I think Foursquare is going to be a very significant business tool and you need to jump on board and sample its effects. I point to another video and a Mashable post giving more examples like those of Hyoun above. See my blog post at:
http://mrees.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/thinking-foursquare-is-a-powerful-business-tool/
Thanks Michael
Just shows that posting something I’m not sure about is a good way for me to get educated! One of the reasons for my hesitation was that I did not see how I could get excited about letting people know every hour or so that I’m here at my computer, at my desk, in Tweed Heads (Tweed where? – http://bit.ly/dwdcth). But I take your point and appreciate the links to your post and the Mashable one.
Update: I am now on Foursquare – username