Foursquare

Foursquare seems to be the current hottest thing in social networking. It is a way of connecting with friends and participating in a game whilst exploring restaurants, parks, cafes, bars, museums etc... It can be used anywhere in the world and for mobile access you can either download an app or use their mobile-friendly website.


If you go out to a bar for example, you tell Foursquare where you are ("check-in"). To do this, it uses GPS to give you a listing of nearby places from which you select your location. It will then notify your friends of where you are.

It doesn't stop there.... When you log into Foursquare you can add tips and to dos. These are all location- and experience-based comments. For example, recommend a particular dish at a restaurant or a must see exhibition. Tips are recommendations for others, to dos are reminders to yourself to try a new dish/place etc... Thus when you check-in with Foursquare it will come up with tips from your friends and to dos from you relating to your current location.

The 'game' component comes from a points system used to encourage you to go out and explore. You receive points for each check-in. Bonus points are on offer for those who are the first to register a new place. You can even become Mayor by being the person to have visited a particular location the highest number of times.

Foursquare integrates with other web 2.0 tools. If you choose to you can link your Foursquare account to your Twitter and Facebook accounts and allow it to report updates. Foursquare itself keeps stats on you - they track your activity - number of nights out, number of checkins, ave. no of checkins per night out, distribution by day etc...

Foursquare seems to have found its niche by creating partnerships with businesses that produce shopping and restaurant guides. This gives them a way of creating a money-making aspect to their resource. There is an interesting article about this on TechCrunch.

Yelp is another social networking site that enables sharing of reviews for local businesses, restaurants, shops and the like, but it appears to focus more strongly on the review aspect than does Foursquare. Yelp also has not been around as long as Foursquare and although it seems good it has a more limited geographic representation.