Location based services have been around for a while, but coming out with the right model that suits everyone’s needs and privacy concerns is never going to be easy.
Established in 2009, Foursquare who provide location based social networking for mobiles, may have come up with something useful.
They allow you to register your experience of visiting and finding of locations, like coffee shops, restaurants, clubs, parks, …in fact anywhere. The more times you visit or find a new place, then this information is registered with the Foursquare system and you receive badges for your loyalty. If you happen to be the number one visitor to any of the locations you or anyone else checks in to, then you qualify as being called the ‘Mayor’. So I figure I must be the mayor of my local Maccy D’s… the amount of times I’ve been there. But Foursquare also reward you for unlocking new venues, so like a video game there various badges to collect for different reasons, or as they say your ‘Adventurousness ‘.
Foursquare’s angle is social, allowing users to share their location activities with their followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook. Using your mobile device to ‘check in’, this then let’s your friends know where you are. You have the option of providing anonymous entries to the system, in case your having a date or you simply don’t want to share the information, but still allowing you to be rewarded for your visit.
There are also other benefits to this model, in that users can begin to see the places visited by people and their popularity. Should this become a widely used site, then the information harnessed can become really powerful. This in turn allows businesses that users are finding or visiting, to offer loyalty related incentives etc. Foursquare are still working out their model with real businesses, but it sounds good so far.
Content courtesy of Foursquare :
What is foursquare?
foursquare is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things. We aim to build things to not only help you keep up with the places your friends go, but that encourage you to discover new places and challenge you to explore your neighborhood in new ways.
How do I get it on my phone?
We have apps available for the iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Palm Pre. If you don’t have one of these phones, you can always use our mobile website or if you prefer to checkin via SMS you can send a text to 50500 (like this: @ Ace Bar ! Playing skeeball). For now SMS checkins are only available in the US.
Where is foursquare available?
You can use foursquare anywhere in the world! Check-in at the Statue of Liberty in NYC, the Golden Gate bridge in SF, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpu or the Arch de Triumph in Paris! Back in the day, we were limited to select cities, but now you can check-in anywhere you please!
What is a check-in?
When you tell foursquare where you are, that’s called “checking-in”. You can check-in from parks, bars, museums, restaurants… really anywhere. When you check-in we’ll let your friends know where they can find you and award you points and badges based on your adventurousness
Find out more about Foursquare at :
If you like Foursquare, you may want this to support your experience :
FourSquare Grader is a simple tool to analyze your FourSquare usage, and give you a grade and rank based on your comparison to other FourSquare users.
Other sites offering similar services include :
Vy.ber ~ Virtually Cyber 